Plot details emerge

last updated 8 January 2015

Washington, D.C.

The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, told interrogators that he originally planned to hijack five planes each on the East and West coasts and “fly them into targets,” the Associated Press reported this week. Mohammed, who is being detained in an undisclosed country, said that Osama bin Laden himself vetoed the idea, saying it would be impossible to pull off so many hijackings at once. In spring 2000, bin Laden also called off plans to simultaneously hijack airliners in East Asia. Mohammed said that he used Internet chat software to pass on his instructions, and that the ringleader wasn’t the notorious Mohamed Atta, but two hijackers who had spent time in California, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.