In an unguarded moment, bin Laden once conceded that the September 11 attacks had exceeded his wildest expectations. His goal had been to “terrorize” Americans, to kill hundreds, and to force them to rethink their military presence in the Islamic world. He had not expected so many people to die, or the World Trade Center Towers to collapse, though he shed no tears over either. Luck also played a big part in the stunning success of the operation. Nonetheless the attack was his doing. Khalid Sheikh Moham- med planned it and saw it through, but responsibility for approving and financing it was bin Laden’s; he owned it.
In mid-1996, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed traveled to Afghani- stan to meet with bin Laden and his close companion Moham- med Atef for the first time. Khalid considered himself a sort of terrorist entrepreneur and freely touted his extensive jihadist credentials—particularly his successes and near-misses during his time in the Philippines—but in truth his track record never matched his own ambitions. Khalid considered bin Laden’s al-Qaeda a business opportunity and he arrived in Afghanistan with an audacious proposal. At his meeting with bin Laden, Khalid unveiled an extensive operation involving ten planes hitting cities on both coasts and tar- geting federal buildings and nuclear power plants. Khalid described how, on the tenth plane, after killing all the male passengers on board with his own hands, he would land the plane and then give a long speech about how America had deserved this. This operation would send shock waves around the world. He, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would be the most famous man on Earth. Bin Laden, who had a symbiotic and neurotic relationship with the media, not surprisingly reacted with little enthusiasm to this grandiose one-man show. He thought the plot impractical and wor- ried about its impact on the future course of his organization. He had received numerous other proposals for attacks. He encouraged Khalid to stay in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda, but he stressed that he was not ready yet to commit to such a large-scale operation. Kha- lid politely declined bin Laden’s invitation; he chose instead to travel around the world to work with other jihadist organizations.
Intoxicated with the success of the embassy bombings in East Africa two years later, in August of 1998, Mohammed Atef encour- aged bin Laden to revisit Khalid’s proposal. What had seemed overly ambitious two years earlier now seemed possible, but would require modifications to make it less about Khalid and more about bin Laden. According to former associates, after the bombing of the two US embassies and the retaliation by the Clinton administration against al-Qaeda, bin Laden had reached a point of no return—the only way to force the United States to withdraw from Muslim lands was to kill a large number of Americans by striking inside the United States. In the spring of 1999, bin Laden informed Khalid that al-Qaeda had accepted his proposal.
In a series of meetings with Atef and Khalid in Kandahar (Zawahiri was noticeably absent from these meetings), bin Laden put his own personal mark on the plot, and transformed it. He narrowed the targets to the Pentagon, the White House, the World Trade Cen- ter, and the Capitol. He dismissed the use of one of the planes to make a media statement, as Khalid had originally envisioned. He designated Khalid as the mastermind of the operation, but he never ceded full control of the plot. After the spring of 1999, Bin Laden’s personal involvement deepened. From the outset, he and Atef micromanaged the plan- ning and execution of the plot. Bin Laden selected the men who would pilot the planes in the attacks, never even consulting Khalid, who found himself in the position of having to make bin Laden’s choices work. Bin Laden preferred those whose personal loyalty to him trumped all other considerations. The Yemeni jihadis whom bin Laden initially chose, however, could not obtain US visas. Of the initial four selected to be pilots, only those with Saudi passports, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were able to take part in the operation. Bin Laden told Khalid to send these two men to California to begin pilot training. On January 15, 2000, after tac- tical training in Afghanistan, they arrived in Los Angeles. Bin Laden believed that the remaining pilots should be chosen from seasoned al-Qaeda members who had been with him in Afghanistan. But, in late 1999, a group of jihadis from Hamburg who arrived to train in Afghanistan changed his thinking. Mohamed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah’s flu- ency in English, their technical education, and their long experience living in the West made them more suitable for the operation.
Shortly after their arrival in Afghanistan, Atef met with the Hamburg group and informed them of bin Laden’s decision to include them in the mission. After receiving tactical training in Afghanistan, Atef instructed them to return to Germany to begin pilot training. Bin Laden designated Mohamed Atta the opera- tional commander, again, without consulting Khalid, who had not yet met these new recruits. Bin Laden would inform him later of his decision. Before returning to Germany in early 2000, Atta met several times with bin Laden to discuss the operation. Then he and his men began to prepare for their mission. Atta found the flight schools in Germany and Europe unsuitable for their training and did not like the length and cost of their programs. In March 2000, he began researching schools in the United States. Khalid assisted with their visa arrangements to enter the United States. Meanwhile, in California, the initial recruits, Hazmi and Mih- dar, who lacked the education of the Hamburg contingent, found themselves struggling with the immense task set out for them. By May 2000, they had concluded that their inability to learn English (despite language courses and tutoring) prohibited advancement in their training. They were inept pilots. One trainer remarked that they showed no interest in take-offs or landings, but were only inter- ested in flying the plane after it took off. They surprised their in- structors when they asked if they could be trained to fly Boeing jets. On June 9, 2000, Mihdar left the United States after deciding that he lacked the necessary skills. He would later return as one of the “muscle hijackers.”
With the abrupt departure of Mihdar, bin Laden sent Hani Han- jour to California to meet up with Hazmi. Hanjour arrived in San Diego in December 2000 and met Hazmi, who was working at a gas station at the time. Hazmi was assigned to accompany Hanjour for training in Arizona, but was no longer considered suitable for pilot training. Instead he was designated as a “muscle hijacker.” After many hurdles, by the end of March 2001, Hanjour had completed his training and Hazmi and Hanjour arrived in Falls Church, Vir- ginia, to await further instructions.