KSM

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted his work goes back to 1993 and the first attack on the World Trade Center, and extends to planning assassination attempts against world leaders from Pope John Paul II and Jimmy Carter, another twenty-eight attacks on targets in the United States, and the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to that attack and a string of others during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released Wednesday by the Pentagon.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said in a statement that was read during the session, which was held last Saturday.

Mohammed claimed responsibility for planning, financing and training others for attacks ranging from the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center to the attempt by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. And he also claimed that he was tortured by the CIA after his capture in 2003.

In all, Mohammed said he was responsible for planning 28 attacks, including many that were never executed. The comments were included in a 26-page transcript released by the Pentagon, which blacked out some of his remarks.

It might also be worth seeing this story about al-Qaeda's efforts to develop biological and nuclear weapons to attack America:

He offered a chilling confession to “managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American soil.”

These hearings prove how bad the attacks could have gotten.  That none of this occurred speaks well of our counter-terrorism units, it seems to me.