The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [214]
Khallad: Mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. His family is from Yemen, but he grew up in Saudi Arabia, where he knew bin Laden. He joined the jihad in Afghanistan at the age of fifteen, eventually losing a foot in a battle against the Northern Alliance. He became a part of the al-Qaeda security team. His real name is Tewfiq bin Attash. Now in U.S. custody.
Jamal Khashoggi: Longtime Saudi journalist and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who covered the Arab Afghans in the jihad against the Soviet occupation. Khashoggi served as an emissary from bin Laden’s extended family, who were seeking to have him renounce violence and return to the Kingdom during his Sudanese exile. After 9/11, Khashoggi distinguished himself by being one of the few Saudis to acknowledge the cultural responsibility that led to the tragedy; later, he was appointed editor of Al-Watan, the Kingdom’s largest daily, but was fired after publishing articles and cartoons that criticized the religious establishment for supporting violence. Now serves as Prince Turki’s media advisor in Washington.
Ahmed Shah Massoud: Pashtun warlord who was the finest strategist of the Afghan cause. After helping to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, he joined the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani as defense minister in 1992. When Rabbani’s government collapsed and the Afghan civil war began, Massoud became head of the Northern Alliance, a group of mujahideen leaders who opposed the Taliban. Bin Laden arranged to have him assassinated on September 9, 2001.
Khaled al-Mihdhar: A member of a distinguished family from the Hadramout that traces its lineage back to the Prophet Mohammed, Mihdhar grew up in Mecca. He married Hoda al-Hada, the daughter of the mujahid whose phone in Sanaa would prove to be so critical in understanding the scope of al-Qaeda. Mihdhar came to the United States in January 2000; he left for a period of time, presumably to shepherd the remaining 9/11 hijackers coming from Saudi Arabia; then he returned to the United States on July 4, 2001. He died in the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 when it struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. He was twenty-six years old.
Ali Mohammed: Egyptian double agent who joined al-Jihad while he was in the Egyptian army. Ordered by Zawahiri to penetrate American intelligence, he worked briefly for the CIA in Hamburg, Germany, before joining the U.S. Army, where he was stationed at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The manuals he smuggled out of there became the foundation of al-Qaeda’s training and tactics. Mohammed cased the U.S. embassies in East Africa and trained bin Laden’s bodyguards. He is now a cooperative witness in U.S. custody, awaiting sentencing in his guilty plea in the embassy bombings case.
Khaled Sheikh Mohammed: The architect of the 9/11 attacks, Mohammed is uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After growing up in Kuwait, Mohammed earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at North Carolina A&T in 1986. He then went to Peshawar, where he became a secretary of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan warlord favored by the Saudis. Met bin Laden in 1996, where he presented a portfolio of plans for attacking the United States. Captured in Pakistan in 2003, he is now being held by American authorities in an undisclosed location.
Zacarias Moussaoui: French Moroccan al-Qaeda operative sent to the United States to participate in an unspecified