http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20040619/ap_on_re_us/sept_11_five_year_plotWASHINGTON - Five years before the worst terror attack in American history, a U.S.-educated Kuwaiti pitched an outlandish idea to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, now a U.S. captive, concedes his apocalyptic vision of 10 planes steered into nuclear power plants, skyscrapers and other American targets received only a lukewarm response from the al-Qaida kingpin.
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Slideshow: September 11
The meeting in Afghanistan (news - web sites) in mid-1996, however, apparently was the genesis of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. Three reports issued this week by the Sept. 11 commission provide the fullest picture yet of how Mohammed's idea evolved from wild scheme to unfathomable reality — and the government's chaotic response.
Mohammed had targeted U.S. airliners before. He was indicted in the United States earlier in 1996 for plotting to bomb 12 flights over the Pacific Ocean, but he wasn't captured. Mohammed, born in Kuwait and a 1986 graduate from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, also wanted to crash a plane into CIA (news - web sites) headquarters.
His new plan needed bin Laden's money and his muscle.
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