How True Are the Confessions of a Terror Mastermind?

Last Wednesday night, I was at the Village Synagogue in Manhattan showing HBO's film The Journalist and Jihadi about the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. The film, which I worked on as a contributing producer/consultant, concludes by linking al Qaeda's #3 operative, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to his shocking videotaped slaughter by beheading of Pearl.

The next day, the U.S. government released portions of the transcript of an interview with "enemy combatant" Mohammed in which he admitted for the first time killing Pearl.

In a grisly disclosure, a man who is now being described as "one of history's most infamous terrorists" claimed, according to Agence France Press, "to have beheaded U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl ... with my blessed right hand," according to a transcript released by the Pentagon." This act alone enables him to supersede the infamy of Carlos "the Jackal."

Interestingly, he said, Pearl's murder was not an Al Qaeda operation, a distinction that may be lost on American readers who were mesmerized by his frightening admissions.

In overseas media, his Pearl connection is being associated with the Islamacist campaign in Kashmir, not Pakistan or Afghanistan. A British-born citizen, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is profiled in the film, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court for Pearl's murder in June 2002, but has appealed the verdict.

What do we make of this public disclosure of Mohammed's "confession?" It comes at a time when a growing scandal in the Justice Department and setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan has the Bush Administration reeling. The claims that this larger-than-life, almost comic book "superterrorist" has made certainly adds weight to the War on Terror and Bush's campaign to hunt down and kill those responsible for 9/11.

Getting the "mastermind" was a big "get" when it happened, and his revelations certainly have positioned him to joining world's worst list. (It was the Pakistanis who got him, not the super sleuths of the CIA.) The Guardian reported that his long list of terror operations -- most of which failed -- were greeted "with shock and skepticism in almost equal measure." The NY Times downplayed their concerns near the end of their story on page A23 saying matter-of-factly, "It is not clear how many of Mr. Mohammed's expansive claims were legitimate." Note the word "expansive."

An American editor wrote to me, "I am deeply troubled by the reports of Mohammed's confession. It strikes me that it is a tidy resolution to a much larger problem. How convenient that we have all the questions answered in one somewhat disheveled package. Considering that the confession was obtained through torture, and the number of studies that have shown that information obtained in that matter is unreliable (although politically expedient), what have we really learned? Is it overly cynical to think that this administration so desperately needs a win that this is being trotted out?

And what of the nefarious Osama Bin Laden? Does this mean that he wasn't involved, if Mohammed was the "mastermind" and orchestrated everything from "A to Z." (By the way, interesting use of the American vernacular -- I wonder who the translator is?)."

Mark Denbeaux, a Seton Hall University law professor who represented two Tunisians held at Guantánamo Bay, said "The government has finally brought someone into Gitmo who apparently admits to being someone who could be called an enemy combatant. "None of the others rise to this level. The government has now got one." He says he may be the only one!

But what have they got? Reports the Guardian, "critics of both the interrogation methods used at the camp and the exclusion of independent observers from the hearings today dismissed the confessions." (Note: the Press was also excluded which is suspicious as well).