Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, grew up in Kuwait in a Pakistani Baluch family and studied engineering in North Carolina. He helped fund his nephew Ramzi Yousef’s 1993 truck bomb under the World Trade Center, and in 1994–95 worked with Yousef in Manila on the Bojinka plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific. [1][2]
In mid-1996 he met bin Laden at Tora Bora and proposed several schemes. One was to train pilots to fly planes into buildings in the United States. At first he envisioned ten planes and targets on both coasts, with himself landing the last to make a speech. Bin Laden thought that too much. He gave the go-ahead to a smaller version in late 1998 or early 1999. [1]
The Commission called KSM “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.” Its staff noted that much of what it knew about the plot’s planning came from KSM and other detainees, through intelligence reports it was not allowed to check by questioning them. [1][3]
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