The official said Mohammed is believed to have been actively involved in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people in 1998, the bombing of the Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000, which killed 17 sailors and nearly sank the $1-billion U.S. warship, and many other attacks.
"There is a clear operational link between him and the execution of most, if not all, of the Al Qaeda plots over the past five years," the official said.
American investigators acknowledge that this evaluation of Mohammed as a central figure in Al Qaeda is largely retrospective. It wasn't until after Sept. 11 that his larger role became apparent.
"He popped up post 9/11 and then, looking back, we saw that he was the Zelig of Al Qaeda, involved in a lot of other things," one investigator said.
Sept. 11
One of the hallmarks of Al Qaeda is its breadth, the dispersion of its resources. So, for example, parts of the network could be preparing to attack American warships in Yemen, others to bomb civilian targets in Europe and Asia, even as the larger organization was already planning Sept. 11.
In an interview with Al Jazeera television, recorded in May this year, Mohammed described himself as the head of Al Qaeda's military committee. He said that "about 2 1/2years prior to the holy raids on Washington and New York, the military committee held a meeting during which we decided to start planning for a martyrdom operation inside America."
That would date the inception of the plot to early 1999. Later that same year, the men who would execute it were chosen, he said. German intelligence agencies believe that Mohammed first came into contact with these men when they visited Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Several of the men were students in Hamburg, Germany, part of a small group of devout Muslims who were growing increasingly restive over the plight of the Islamic world.
They were largely middle class, some well educated, not dispossessed in any apparent way. One was an urban planner and architect, one an aeronautical engineering student and one a prospective marine engineering student. Mohammed, a mechanical engineering graduate, chose other engineers for Al Qaeda's riskiest undertaking. They were, like him, devout but at home in the West, adept at languages and technically inclined.
