Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "confessed" to targeting bank founded after his arrest.
Fallacy of testimony exposed as story blows up in Pentagon's face
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, March 16, 2007
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's alleged confession testimony has been thoroughly discredited after it emerged that one of the targets he identified, the Plaza Bank, was not founded until 2006, four years after the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind's arrest.
In his confession, KSM claims, "I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the New (or Second) Wave of attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11: ...Plaza Bank, Washington state."
KSM was arrested in March 2003. According to the Plaza Bank's website, the organization was founded in early 2006, making it impossible for KSM to have even known of the bank's existence before 2003, never mind plotted against it.
Skepticism about the legitimacy of KSM's confession has gushed forth from all quarters, leaving the credibility of the Pentagon and the process of military tribunals in ruins and provoking additional questions about why the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind admitted to involvement in such a vast range of plots.
After media commentators across the spectrum, from Time Magazine to Matt Lauer and even Rosie O'Donnell were openly cynical of the accuracy of KSM's testimony, officials speaking on condition of anonymity admitted that the claims were exaggerated, but still insist KSM's responsibility for 9/11, "from A to Z" is genuine.
Former CIA field officer Robert Baer also expressed his doubts, questioning "What the Pentagon's objective really is in releasing the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession."
"On the face of it, KSM, as he is known inside the government, comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It's also clear he is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimizes KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated," writes Baer.
The facet of the Pearl murder and why the establishment would want to shut the lid on the whole affair by pinning the blame on KSM is interesting in the context that in September 2006, Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf fingered Omar Sheikh as Pearl's assassin, adding that he was an MI6 agent working for British Intelligence. In the transcript of his alleged confession, KSM cryptically discusses CIA and Mossad involvement in the Pearl execution but the text is heavily redacted.
KSM's claim that he ran the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is also highly suspect because it also conveniently sweeps under the carpet the fact that it was the FBI who provided the terror cell with the bomb materials through their informant and ordered the bombing to go ahead.
In addition, KSM was a known CIA asset in the eighties and was used as a go between during the CIA-funded Afghan "jihad" against the occupying Soviets.
SEE: New York Times articles (numbered links, 1,2 and 3) describing FBI handling of perps at all stages of the 1993 WTC bombing plot: [1] [2] [3].
SEE also FBI handling of participant of the crime: (click here).
It is well established that before his mysterious arrest as the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 plot, Mohammed was granted a visa to enter the US just six weeks before the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York.
Other questions that have arisen concerning the testimony revolve around KSM's Americanized use of the English language, including the term "A to Z," which many see as a form of slang that befits tabloid headlines more than it does the vernacular of radical Muslim extremists.
A CNN online poll shows that a massive 74% disbelieve all of the claims made by KSM and BBC respondents were equally cynical.
Think Progress makes the point that KSM's comments on torture and any potential reference to the fact that he was tortured himself are redacted in the transcript.
The upshot of all this is that the much vaunted KSM confession, which seems to have been intentionally inflated so the book could be closed on a number of nebulous plots cited by the Bush administration as justification for its policies, has blown up in the establishment's face and only succeeded in detracting credibility from the government's official 9/11 story and the mythical war on terror.
