More KSM mysteries

Let's follow up on the previous post.

A lot of people have focused on the "Plaza Bank" slip made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in his confession. This confession was read out loud by KSM's representative during a 2007 hearing held at Guantanamo, with KSM interjecting to make minor corrections. The transcript (pdf) is here.

Throughout the confession, KSM uses the phrase "I was responsible" for various plots, but at paragraph 29 he corrects his lawyer: He shared responsibility for an alleged plot to kill John Paul II. If nothing else, this correction tells us that KSM chose his words with some care and was not mindlessly assenting to a laundry list provided by his interrogators.

So why did he pick the "Plaza Bank" in Washington State, an institution which was not founded until 2006? KSM was captured in 2003.

One could posit that his interrogators had planted the idea, but that suggestion doesn't make much sense. The other plots (real or imagined) mentioned in the confession are rather more spectacular. Why frame the guy on a smaller charge? And why would they make such an obvious error?

How would KSM have even known about the existence of something called "the Plaza Bank" in Washington? Did he have an internet connection?

Why would he pick a bank lacking a high profile? The Plaza Bank has a certain statewide fame for catering to Hispanic customers, but it is not a name which causes Wall Street to quake. As near as I can tell, none of its branch buildings are particularly impressive. They have offices in the Kent Station shopping plaza in Kent -- which the locals are proud of, but which does not have the kind of renown one associates with, say, the World Trade Center.

Paragraph 7 of the confession offers the relevant data:

I was responsible for planning, training, surveying and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11:

a. Library Tower, California
b. Sears Tower, Chicago,
c. Plaza Bank, Washington state.
d. The Empire State Building, New York City.

The Plaza Bank branch in Seattle is located in an unimportant building that no-one would call a skyscraper. The tallest structure in Seattle -- and, by some measures, the tallest west of the Mississippi -- is the 76-storey Columbia Center, otherwise known as the Bank of America tower. Could KSM have mixed up his banks? That may be the likeliest explanation: The surrounding area is called the Bank of America Plaza. So perhaps we may consider that mystery solved -- although in order to do so, we must presume an odd coincidence: In misspeaking, KSM happened upon the name of an actual bank in Washington. At any rate, if he couldn't even get the name of the place right, then I don't see how this could have been a serious threat.

Note this oddity: The listed address for the Plaza Bank in Seattle is 420 5th Avenue. As I said, it's an unimpressive place in an unimpressive area. (Look it up in Google Earth.) However, 420 5th Avenue North in Seattle puts us in a very interesting spot: Right next to the Space Needle -- maybe 600 feet away. I think we can all agree that the Needle makes an impressive target.

Coincidence? Probably. But it's one of those coincidences that one does not shake off immediately.

How could KSM "survey" the four locations listed above without doing a whole lot of travel in the United States? According to a Financial Times article (reproduced here; I don't have a link to the original), KSM was granted a visa to visit the United States six weeks before the September 11 attacks -- a visa which he "did not appear" to have used. I can only presume that he sent others to do the spadework.

Incidentally, the "Library Building" in Los Angeles refers to the Library Tower, an older name for the U.S. Bank Tower. That's the building which gets the big zap in Independence Day.

Here's another long-overlooked stinger in the confession. Paragraph 16:

I was responsible for planning, financing, and surveying for the destruction of buildings in the Israeli city of Elat by using airplanes leaving from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia?

Hello...? Nobody is even talking about this one. And why not? Now that's a mystery for which I have, as yet, no answer.