Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Terrorist Attack the World Has Ever Seen

When star Al-Jazeera TV reporter Yosri Fouda received an anonymous call summoning him to a secret interview in Pakistan with al-Qaeda, he knew he could be walking into a deadly trap, as Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had done only months before. But he took the risk and hit pay dirt. For 48 hours, Fouda listened as two of the world's most wanted men, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, head of al-Qaeda's military committee, and Ramzi Binalshibh, the link between Mohammed Atta and the senior al-Qaeda leadership, proudly claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon-the first time al-Qaeda took direct responsibility. During the course of the in-depth interview, they detailed exactly how, over a two-year period, the plot was conceived, planned, and executed. Based on that interview and hours of follow-up investigation, MASTERMINDS OF TERROR also contains dramatic accounts of the subsequent seizure of both Binalshibh and Mohammed and analyzes al-Qaeda's attempts to justify its actions on what it calls 'Holy Tuesday.'