9-11 mastermind Iraqi agent?

Senior al-Qaida operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not the man he says he is, according to author Laurie Mylroie, who claims if U.S. authorities would do a little digging, they'd discover Mohammed is an Iraqi intelligence agent – a fact that would serve as smoking-gun evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the terror of Sept. 11.

Mylroie, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the book "The War Against America," laid out her claim in an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal.

Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, March 1 and has been providing interrogators with critical information about al-Qaida operations and ongoing attack plots, according to U.S. officials.

WorldNetDaily has reported that Mohammed is being subjected to ''stress and duress''-style interrogation techniques at the Bagram U.S. military base in Afghanistan and has been told that his sons are being held by the U.S.

As the operational leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network, Mohammed is said to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and is thought to have planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Mylroie maintains Mohammed is a Pakistani Baluch, along with Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The two collaborated with a third Baluch in 1995, Abdul Hakam Murad, in an unsuccessful plot to bomb 12 U.S. airplanes. The plot, called "Project Bojinka," involved ramming a fuel-laden airliner into the Pentagon.

Baluchs are Sunni Muslims who live in the desert regions of eastern Iran and western Pakistan – Baluchistan – and have longstanding ties to Iraqi intelligence. Wafiq Samarrai, former chief of Iraqi military intelligence who defected to the West in 1994, explains that Iraqi intelligence worked with the Baluch during the Iran-Iraq war.

WorldNetDaily also reported that information gleaned from the Mohammed interrogations sparked a major new hunt for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden that was centered around the Baluchistan region. Mohammed said he recently met with bin Laden in the area, and there reportedly have been numerous sightings of bin Laden in the area on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border.

Mylroie said Mohammed, Yousef and Murad, are part of a tight circle.

Their identities are based on documents from Kuwaiti files that predate Kuwait's liberation from Iraqi occupation. These documents form the basis of Mylroie's false-identity theory. When Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, it used some Kuwaiti files to create false identities for key agents, according to Mylroie.

There is evidence Yousef's file was tampered with. The front pages of his passport, including his picture and signature are missing. Extraneous information was also inserted: The notation that Yousef and his family left Kuwait on Aug. 26, 1990 – during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait – and traveled through Iraq on their way to Pakistani Baluchistan in Iran.

Mylroie points out people don't provide authorities with itineraries when crossing a border.

She concludes Yousef is an Iraqi agent who assumed the identity of Abdul Basit Karim, a Kuwaiti who disappeared during Iraq's occupation. Records show Yousef entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef, but fled on a passport in the name of Abdul Basit Karim.

According to Mylroie, New York FBI – particularly its director, Jim Fox – believed that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an Iraqi intelligence operation.

The Los Angeles Times uncovered critical family ties between Mohammed and Karim.

"What little is known about the sister [of Mohammed]," reports the paper, "includes one compelling piece of information: She is thought to be the mother of Abdul Karim Basit, better known as Ramzi Ahmed Yousef."

Mylroie deduces that Mohammed would know if someone was falsely passing himself off as his nephew, and therefore, must be an Iraqi operative as well.

According to documents, Mohammed was born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents on April 19, 1965. That puts Mohammed just under 38 years of age.

In a final point, Mylroie suggests the graying sideburns and heavy jowls in Mohammed's arrest photo circulated by federal agents belong to someone substantially older than 38.

Mylroie's deduction is in keeping with what she has argued for years: Saddam Hussein is likely behind the terrorism against U.S. interests that has occurred throughout the world since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

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