When the senior Al Qaeda planner of 9/11 wanted to drop a hijacker, the boss overruled him. When he wanted to expand the plot to the West Coast and into Asia, the boss said no. This is the portrait of Osama bin Laden that emerges from a report released by the commission investigating the attacks —the terrorist-as-CEO. ‘‘It does have a corporate quality about it,’’ said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had approached bin Laden in 1996 with a proposal that blended his two obsessions: the WTC and exploding airplanes. With his nephew and others, Mohammed had already tried in 1993 to destroy the twin towers.But a lot changed between 1996 and 1999. Forced into Afghanistan, he helped the Taliban take control of the country. On August 7, 1998, Al Qaeda pulled off the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Then President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on an Al Qaeda camp in retaliation. Laden ‘‘summoned’’ Mohammed to Kandahar. They told Mohammed that his plan ‘‘had Al Qaeda’s full support,’’ starting with four potential suicide bombers ‘‘so eager that two hijackers already had US visas.” Those two — Nawaf Al Hamzi and Khalid Al Mihdhar — began training for the plot in 1999. The other two initial hijackers couldn’t obtain visas, so Muhammed proposed deploying them in a coordinated attack in Asia. Laden said no.Meanwhile, he had found better prospects for the plot: four young men from Germany, including Mohamed Atta. It was bin Laden who gave the word to strike. He ‘‘argued that attacks against the US must be carried out immediately,’’ the report said. ‘‘In his thinking, the more Al Qaeda did, the more support it would gain.and the attacks went ahead.’’ — (LAT-WP)
