WASHINGTON — The most revealing aspect of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's testimony before a military tribunal may not have been the details about the many Al Qaeda plots he claims to have orchestrated but the insight it offered into the suspected Sept. 11 mastermind.
In an hourlong written and oral presentation to his military captors Saturday, Mohammed showed himself to be ambitious, boastful and, when given the chance, talkative. He was even thoughtful about his cause and his craft.
It was the first public glimpse of the man who has claimed credit for the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, and more than two dozen other plots as well.
But was Mohammed revealing the truth about himself and his deeds, or just playing to the jury?
By framing his life as an underdog militant in terms Americans might understand, and by expressing occasional regret and remorse, Mohammed may have been seizing the opportunity to make his best and most palatable case to the public about why he and Al Qaeda have waged war against the United States, U.S. officials and experts reviewing his testimony suggest.
"It is designed to have an American audience understand that there is another way of looking at the conflict between the West and radical Islam under [Osama] bin Laden's leadership, and that is quite striking," said Dr. Jerrold Post, the former chief personality profiler for the CIA.
Post, the author of a forthcoming book, "The Mind of the Terrorist," described the "performance" by Al Qaeda's former chief of operations as part psychological warfare and part artfully crafted courtroom argument.
"This does not reflect someone who was brainwashed," either by radical Islamic fundamentalists or U.S. interrogators since his capture in Pakistan in March 2003, Post said. "I take it as confirmation of the significance of his position that despite his thuggish appearance, this is a very shrewd and rather precise individual whose attention to detail and careful planning went into his being promoted to such a high position within Al Qaeda."
In the transcript, Mohammed comes across as a different and more complex personality than most Al Qaeda leaders whom the American public has learned about from videotapes, Internet postings and interrogation reports.
His lengthy exposition, for instance -- several typewritten pages, single-spaced -- wasn't the usual diatribe against the godless enemy. And in his off-the-cuff remarks, he was anything but the typical doctrinaire sermonizer.
