[Note: The title is too long for 911blogger. The full title is "9/11 Mastermind: "'During ... My Interrogation I Gave A Lot Of False Information In Order To Satisfy What I Believed The Interrogators Wished To Hear' ".

If I could have added the word "Alleged" at the beginning, I would have. But that didn't fit even on my own blog.]

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/during-my-interrogation-i-gave-lot-of.html

The Red Cross is the organization charged with deciding what is torture and what isn't.

The International Committee of the Red Cross interviewed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed - the alleged 9/11 mastermind - at Guantanamo Bay.

Here's what KSM told the Red Cross:

During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

• Torture doesn't work; and

• The 9/11 Commission report was based on worthless confessions extracted by torture (and, as I've previously discussed, the witness who fingered Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the mastermind of 9/11 was himself literally crazy)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month

By: emptywheel Saturday April 18, 2009 11:57 am

(PLS READ THE COMMENTS AT HUFFINGTON POST- on the FRONTPAGE at this moment)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/18/cia-waterboarded-khalid-s_n_188644.html

I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/623820.html
Posted on Wed, Jul. 30, 2008

Alleged 9/11 mastermind won't testify - live
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed has balked at testifying in person at the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver, defense lawyers said Wednesday. Instead, the jury will get written statements from the al Qaeda kingpin and another alleged plotter in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Lawyers for Salim Hamdan, 37, plan to use the testimony of Mohammed and Walid Bin Attash to try to exonerate the driver, Hamdan, of being an al Qaeda co-conspirator.

One of those men has already written Hamdan's lawyers that the Yemeni with a fourth-grade education ''Was not fit to plan or execute,'' according to defense attorney Harry Schneider of Seattle. ``He is fit to change tires. And oil filters.''

The argument dovetails nicely with the driver's defense that he never joined al Qaeda, did not know in advance about the details of al Qaeda terror plots and merely drove for $200 a month -- and not for ideology.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/911-change-yes-we-should_b_108973.html

9/11 Change: Yes We Should!
Posted June 24, 2008 | 03:46 PM (EST)

Recently, our government excluded the 9/11 victims' families from attending the arraignment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terror suspects at the military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. Initially, none of the families, with the exception of ardent Bush supporter Debra Burlingame, were invited.

After this issue became public, the resultant furor caused Debra Burlingame to be dis-invited and a system was established whereby the 9/11 victims' families could observe future sessions via CCTV coverage at various military bases on the east coast. In addition, a lottery system was established so that selected family members, who may want to attend the trial at Guantanamo Bay, will be provided an opportunity to participate.

A testament to the power of words and truth, and the weakness of deceit and injustice:

"Meantime, a Pentagon prosecutor warned the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, of dire consequences if he lets the defense call suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and six other former CIA captives to testify for Hamdan.

''It's not the sky that might fall. It's another building,'' said prosecutor Clayton Trivett Jr. ``In the minds of some of these individuals, they hold some of the mostly closely guarded secrets in the national intelligence community.''"

http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/604656.html

Bin Laden driver wants '9/11 braintrust' as witnesses
Posted on Mon, Jul. 14, 2008

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A Pentagon prosecutor warned Monday that testimony from an alleged al Qaeda kingpin, meant to clear Osama bin Laden's driver of war crimes, could help terrorists topple another American building.

A defense lawyer argued that the charges against the driver, Salim Hamdan of Yemen, were unconstitutional and urged dismissal.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKNASU6040120080605

9/11 families excluded from Guantanamo hearing

Thu Jun 5, 2008 4:03am BST

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - As the Guantanamo war crimes court prepared to arraign five prisoners on death penalty charges of orchestrating the September 11 attacks, a Pentagon official apologized on Wednesday for excluding victims' families from the hearing.

The U.S. military quietly invited one woman whose brother was an American Airlines pilot killed in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon in the 2001 attacks.

But the invitation to attend Thursday's arraignment at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba was rescinded when the New York Daily News revealed that lone invitee Debra Burlingame was an ardent defender of President George W. Bush who spoke in support of his administration at the Republican Party convention during his 2004 re-election campaign.

Relatives of other victims complained that the Guantanamo trials were being politicized and the Pentagon's legal adviser, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, acknowledged the matter was mishandled.

Lawyer fears 9/11 mastermind trial will be 'insanity'
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Prescott Prince is a small-town lawyer who has never taken a death penalty case to trial. Yet he finds himself involved in one of the biggest capital punishment cases this century: He's defending the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He readily acknowledges how his client is perceived as "one of the most reviled people" in the world. But he says it's imperative America give Mohammed a fair trial, just like anyone else accused of a crime.

No civilian court, he says, would accept confessions obtained after a defendant was mistreated. But the CIA admits Mohammed was waterboarded, a controversial interrogation technique that involves simulated drowning.

"I take the position that this is mock execution. ... Colloquially speaking, at least it's torture," Prince says.

The fact whatever Mohammed said during such duress could be used at trial is alarming to Prince.

continue reading

Our best response may be to contrast the Gitmo trials with Stalin's Show Trials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials

"The Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. After Nikita Khrushchev's revelations in the 1950s, the Moscow Trials are today universally acknowledged as show trials in which the verdicts were predetermined using extorted confessions."

We correctly compared 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire. The historical precedent for the Gitmo detainees is Stalin's Show Trials.

Stalin and Terrorism: http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch20.htm
(This follows the 1934 assassination of Kirov)

Official victim's list?
"The charge sheet also named the 2,973 victims killed during the September 11 attacks"

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/31802.html

by Jim Kouri, CPP - Prosocutors in the case against the self-described mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and five of his co-conspirators have amended the charge sheet against the detainees to further clarify their activities, a senior Pentagon official announced today in a teleconference for Internet journalists and bloggers.

The reswearing of charges involves the case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, more commonly known by his initials, KSM, and five others in connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, Bryan Whitman, deputy assistant secretary of defense, said during the teleconference.

The other defendants in the “9-11 case” are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi and Mohammed al Kahtani. All of the suspects are being held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility.

ACLU taps top legal talent to defend accused 9-11 plotters
By Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008

The American Civil Liberties Union, which for years has scorned Pentagon military commissions as "kangaroo courts,'' announced Friday that it will try to provide top civilian defense attorneys for alleged terrorists facing trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — including the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Former Attorney General Janet Reno is among top lawyers who've endorsed the $8.5 million effort, which will help coordinate and defray the expenses of civilian defense attorneys working on the terrorism cases. Under the military commissions scheme, the Pentagon won't reimburse volunteer civilian attorneys for their expenses.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said a major thrust of the effort will be to defend Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who military officials say has confessed to masterminding the 9-11 attacks and several other terrorist acts, including the beheading in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_sept_11_trial

Pentagon charges Sept. 11 suspects

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer

The Pentagon has charged six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, it was announced Monday. Officials said they'll seek the death penalty in what would be the first trials under the terrorism-era military tribunal system.

"These charges allege a long term, highly sophisticated, organized plan by al-Qaida to attack the United States of America," Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the tribunal system, told reporters. He added that the charges have been sworn "against six individuals alleged to be responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks" which occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 and killed nearly 3,000 people.

Hartmann said the six include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the attacks in which hijacked planes were flown into buildings in New York and Washington. Another hijacked plane crashed in the fields of western Pennsylvania.

Pentagon censors 9/11 suspect's tape
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/sept11_confession_audio

The Pentagon has censored an audio tape of the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks speaking at a military hearing — cutting out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's explanation for why Islamic militants waged jihad against the United States.

After months of debate by several federal agencies, the Defense Department released the tape Thursday. Cut from it were 10 minutes of the more than 40-minute closed court session at Guantanamo Bay to determine whether Mohammed should be declared an "enemy combatant."

Since the March hearing, he has been assigned "enemy combatant" status, a classification the Bush administration says allows it to hold him indefinitely and prosecute him at a military tribunal.

Officials from the CIA, FBI, State Department and others listened to the tape and feared it could be copied and edited by other militants for use as propaganda, officials said.

Source: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20070806_9_11_suspect_says_CIA_tortured_him.html

9/11 suspect says CIA tortured him

By Josh White and Julie Tate

Washington Post

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was subjected to the CIA's harshest interrogation methods while he was held in secret prisons around the world for more than three years, part of an interrogation regimen that the International Committee of the Red Cross has called "tantamount to torture," according to an article published on the New Yorker magazine's Web site yesterday.
In a 12-page article released Saturday, reporter Jane Mayer analyzes the development of the CIA's secret interrogation techniques and writes that a confidential Red Cross report to the U.S. government details Mohammed's assertions that he was tortured by the CIA.

I want to see him live on television, or at the very least, a photograph of him. You don't have to be a "conspiracy theorist" to read something as vivid as "few Pakistan Rangers entered the flat, where they found Shaikh Mohammed and another man, allegedly with their hands up. The Rangers nevertheless opened fire on the pair. [...] "an Arab woman and a child were taken to an ISI safe house, where they identified the Shaikh Mohammed's body as their husband and father. The body was kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days before being buried, under the surveillance of the FBI, in a graveyard in the central district of Karachi. " and question the validity of his existence. Especially considering the level of secrecy around him. - Jon

The Black Sites
A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program.

Source: newyorker.com

by Jane Mayer August 13, 2007

Abid Ullah Jan has an interesting point of view in this article on recent CIA allegations agains the ISI.

To be fair, like the overall Pakistan military force, the much dreaded ISI has been used like a whore by the CIA in every possible way. At home, both the civilian and military dictators use the ISI as a draconian tool. But this is all that the ISI is: just a tool, without any strategic mission, vision or direction of its own.

and

In this backdrop, the March 2003 hearing of the U.S. Senate[1] was just another threat in the vast trap being laid for the Pakistani army for the next several years. Furthermore, ISI assets, Saeed Sheikh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were used in operation 9/11. The extent to which the ISI was dragged into the trap of 9/11 is not fully known. That, however, remains a time bomb for Pakistan. It didn’t get diffused with the “termination” of former ISI chief General Mahmood Ahmad. It can explode at any time the US decides to disarm and neutralise Pakistan like Iraq.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/42839