U.S. got detainees to talk, then connected the dots

One suspect's casual comments led to another's capture. His interrogation in turn yielded more arrests. The result: an unraveled terror network and several foiled attacks, according to the Bush administration.

WASHINGTON — It began, in part, with information that al-Qaida commander Abu Zubaydah thought was so useless he revealed it to the CIA.

Instead, the tip — the name of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — helped the government start unraveling al-Qaida's network through nearly 100 detainees nabbed over several years.

With each new lead, investigators say, they tracked plans for what the Bush administration described Wednesday as eight foiled attacks. Two of the disrupted attacks were said to have targeted the United States.

And by connecting the dots from suspected terrorists, intelligence officials culled the names of 86 people considered suitable by al-Qaida for carrying out terror operations against Western targets. Many of them were previously unknown; half have since been captured or what the Bush administration described as "removed from the battlefield."

Information culled from 14 — in custody and considered among the worst — was released Wednesday. Zubaydah proved to be the start of a trove of terror intelligence.

Captured in March 2002, he gave interrogators "some information that he probably viewed as nominal," according to a summary of the CIA detainee program provided by National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's office.

That information: Mohammed's name and alias, "Mukhtar" — a top prize for the government's counterterror crackdown.

Otherwise known as "KSM," Mohammed's name and alias were cross-checked through counterterror databases for clues leading to his whereabouts.

Abu Zubaydah's information, along with a bribe to one al-Qaida operative and eavesdropping on cellphone calls, helped lead to the capture of Mohammed a year later, in March 2003.

In turn, Mohammed led interrogators to Riduan Isamuddin, or "Hambali."

Hambali, al-Qaida's liaison to the Southeast Asia Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah, was involved in numerous terror plots and assassination attempts. After he was captured in 2003, he told interrogators that his JI cell "was intended for KSM's future U.S. operations," according to Wednesday's government summary.

Behind bars, Mohammed or his loyalists revealed plots to attack London's Heathrow Airport and West Coast targets in the United States with hijacked airplanes, the summary said. Mohammed himself is said to have described to his interrogators how he directed his operatives to blow up U.S. buildings too tall for victims to jump out of, ensuring they would die by smoke inhalation.

In other cases, suspected terrorists admitted knowing of plans to blow up urban targets in the United Kingdom and a U.S. Marine base in Djibouti, and killing hundreds in Karachi, Pakistan. The detained suspects also talked of operations, in 2002 and 2003, to attack ships in the Arabian Gulf and in the Strait of Hormuz. The latter plan, according to the administration, was thwarted because counterterror officials captured its instigator.

Negroponte's summary repeatedly stressed that the Justice Department reviewed the interrogation techniques more than once and deemed them legal. Additionally, the CIA's inspector general investigated and audited the interrogation program, on which House and Senate lawmakers and their top staffers were also briefed.

Zubaydah, one of the first captured, clammed up shortly after revealing Mohammed's name and alias. That was when CIA interrogators resorted to what Bush called an "alternative set of procedures." The interrogators were carefully selected, and they received long hours of special training.

The "alternative" interrogation techniques, Bush said, "were tough, and they were safe and lawful and necessary."

Zubaydah "soon began providing accurate and timely actionable intelligence," according to the intelligence summary. His information led authorities in September 2002 to Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected 9/11 plotter, who is believed to be a lead operative for foiled plans to crash aircraft into Heathrow.

The 14 suspects still held have been transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay for trials. They were among detainees who gave up information about several high-profile cases in which potential U.S. targets were monitored, or cased, including:

• The Brooklyn Bridge, targeted by Ohio truck driver Iyman Faris who later pleaded guilty with providing material support to al-Qaida.

• U.S. financial institutions in major cities along the East Coast, which Mohammed said were cased by an operative before 9/11 who is now in the custody of a foreign state.

• U.S. government and tourist sites in 2003 and 2004 by an al-Qaida designee who is being held by a foreign state.

Information from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.