According to a transcript of a Guantanamo Bay military tribunal newly released by the Bush administration, �Al-Qaeda mastermind� Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has �confessed� that he directed the 9/11 attacks, and was fully or partially responsibility for more than 30 other terror plots and attacks. With this �confession,� the mysterious Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (or �KSM�) becomes the ultimate and lone fall guy for virtually all �Al-Qaeda�-attributed attacks prior to 9/11, and up to his alleged arrest in 2002.

Rather than put to rest all doubts about 9/11, the KSM �confession� refocuses all inquiries back on the Bush administration�s role behind the 9/11-Al-Qaeda-�terrorism� military-intelligence propaganda operation, and the manufacturing of the KSM legend.

KSM�s sudden penchant for �spilling his guts� comes at the moment the imploding and scandal-ridden Bush-Cheney cabal faces intensifying political heat and public outrage.

More importantly, the KSM �confession� fails to address the most fundamental issues and unanswered questions underlying the �war on terrorism.�

Who or what is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Like Osama bin Laden, KSM remains a propaganda legend, and one of a multitude of 9/11 red herrings that the US government not addressed.

Mystery Surrounding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

A series of investigative articles by Chaim Kupferberg in 2002 exposed critical evidence and damning questions about KSM, �Al-Qaeda,� the ISI, 9/11, and the Bush administration�s guiding hand behind of all it:

9/11 and the Smoking Gun that Turned on its Tracker

June 2002 Plan to Market A New 9/11 Mastermind

The Recruiters of 9/11

Stacking the Patsies of 9/11

It remains unclear if KSM was captured in 2002, as purported, or if he was ever delivered into custody to be interrogated. In fact, many credible mainstream reports suggest that KSM is dead, and that he never made it into custody.

There is not a shred of verifiable proof to confirm any aspect of KSM -- or the veracity of this new tribunal. We have only the word of a criminal Bush administration and the CIA.

As Michael Ruppert wrote in Across the Rubicon: �The US government has failed to produce -- publicly, or for the one failed 9/11 criminal prosecution in Germany of Mounir el Motassadeq -- either bin al-Shibh or KSM as material witnesses. No mere mortal has seen either one of them since their reported captures. Credible reports have told us that KSM was killed. Any information alleged to have come from these �captured� suspects has come in the form of �press-release prosecution� by the government. None of it has ever been independently authenticated.�

This raises the possibility that the entire KSM legend is, like the entire �Al-Qaeda� legend, a lie; a blatant propaganda work.

The testimony itself (which is analyzed more fully below) is full of contradictions and unanswered questions. For sake of argument, even if a living KSM actually did, in fact, appear at a tribunal to be recorded, the overriding facts remain as follows:

1. If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is �Al-Qaeda,� he is a US intelligence asset.

2. �Al-Qaeda� is a US military-intelligence network, used exclusively on behalf of Anglo-American geostrategic war policy. �Islamic terrorism� (created by the CIA) and �Al-Qaeda� serve as the face of American covert operations and terrorism, and the instrument of the Bush administration. �Al-Qaeda� operatives were either witting or unwitting US and US-trained agents, operating in compartmentalized units, who were ordered and/or guided into fulfilling their roles. Some �Al-Qaeda� stories, perhaps even KSM, are outright fabrications; utter fantasy.

The historical facts are amply documented and exhaustively spelled out in Michel Chossudovsky�s America�s �War on Terrorism,� Michael C. Ruppert�s Across the Rubicon, and a host of investigative sources.

It is ludicrous to believe the notion that KSM and �Al-Qaeda� assets alone could have carried out 9/11, an operation that necessitated years of US policy geostrategy to set up, the participation of US and US-affiliated intelligence, procedures carried out by American assets on US soil, control of the US government (command and control) via the highest levels of Bush-Cheney.

All 9/11 evidence points directly to the US government and the Bush administration, and nowhere else. No amount of disinformation changes, or hides, this fact.

KSM�s day at Gitmo

The fact that KSM�s confession comes by way of a military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay complex immediately raises several red flags.

Gitmo itself is an illegal operation in its totality; the headquarters of the Bush administration�s criminal military prison camp and torture operation. Even mainstream corporate reporters (including Helen Thomas) have already raised questions about the possibility that KSM�s confession was obtained through torture. At first KSM repeated many times throughout his performance that he was under no duress, and merely �sang� voluntarily. KSM said many times throughout his performance that he was under no duress, and merely �sang� voluntarily. Nevertheless, Gitmo, and the role of the CIA interrogators, immediately taints the testimony.

KSM�s trustworthiness is yet another problem. According to the New York Times, �it is not clear how many of Mohammed�s expansive claims are legitimate. In 2005, the Sept. 11 commission [itself a massive official cover-up] said Mohammed was noted for his extravagant ambitions, and, using his initials, described his vision as �a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star, the superterrorist.�

A final problem: only KSM has �confessed.� Two other reputed Al-Qaeda operatives in custody, Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh have refused to cooperate with US officials, until they could be tried according to proper judicial principles. Why? Which of the �Al-Qaeda� operatives are actually alive (if any)?

Even if simply accepted at face value (again, for the sake of argument), the tribunal, according to the complete transcript, was a bizarre and at times humorous affair, supervised by unnamed US intelligence officers, and supposedly attended by KSM, a translator and a �personal representative,� purported to be a US Air Force lieutenant.

According to the heavily redacted transcript, KSM is first asked about his English language skills. KSM, in bizarre fashion, responds by stating his preference for English, but works out an arrangement to have some of his statements translated. The rest of KSM�s statements (those not read by the personal representative) are rambling, disjointed, and full of poor English and non-sequiturs. Does or does not KSM speak English well enough to toss around American-style slang?

The tribunal then lays out the list of claims against KSM, accusing him of �directing� the 9/11 attacks, based on evidence from computer hard drives seized during his arrest. The seized evidence includes pilot licenses for the 19 alleged 9/11 hijackers, copies of Internet chat sessions between the operatives, spreadsheets of money transfers, and operational procedures and training guides for Al-Qaeda cells.

Despite the fact that every one of these claims has been debunked or saddled with unanswered questions, KSM mounts no defense.

KSM then suggests, in a strange exchange with the tribunal, that he was mistreated (tortured) by CIA interrogators after his arrest in 1993, and after his transfer to Guantanamo in 2006. This portion is heavily redacted.

It is at this point in the proceeding that KSM, suddenly and unbidden, �spills his guts.�

KSM proceeds to claim, in the perfect vernacular of an American, �I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z.�

The �personal representative� (the US Air Force officer) then reads a long list of admissions allegedly written by KSM. KSM declares that he, not Osama bin Laden, was the �operational commander for all foreign operations� for Al-Qaeda, as well as the leader of �media operations� (under Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri).

KSM claims responsibility for the thwarted 1995 Operation Bojinka bombing-hijacking, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, attempted bombings of landmarks in New York, Chicago and London, a plan to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal, attacks on US and Israeli embassies around the world, and the Bali terror bombing. KSM also claims responsibility for assassination attempts against former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Pope John Paul II, as well as for directing Al-Qaeda attempts to develop chemical weapons and dirty bombs.

In addition to these extravagant claims, KSM claims that he �shared� responsibility for the murder of Daniel Pearl. The Pearl murder, according to KSM, was not an Al-Qaeda operation and �not connected to UBL [Osama bin Laden]� but a �Pakistan Mujahadeen� operation. He suggests here that Pearl was connected to the CIA and the Mossad.

The new twist on the Daniel Pearl murder fails to answer the many unanswered questions raised by the analysis of the Pearl murder by Kupferberg. Interestingly, both versions point to the involvement of Pakistan�s ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA. In fact, the KSM version even more emphatically implicates the ISI and, by extension, the CIA.

Bush administration desperation

Kupferberg wrote the following in 2002, �It remains to be seen how the authorities will conclusively deal with the festering anomalies surrounding their three prize catches -- the elusive Binalshibh, the perhaps dead Khalid, and the perhaps fictitious Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi. Nevertheless, it is a safe bet that in the meantime, the authorities will continue to weave ever more complex and murky tapestries around the personalities of these operatives, employing the mercenary talents of writers like Gerald Posner to add to the crumbling sediment of �facts.��

If we assume that the KSM �confession� is, like the rest of the �Al-Qaeda� operation, another grotesque propaganda fabrication, it speaks volumes about the current mindset of the Bush administration�s intelligence apparatus.

The festering administration is now so desperate to revive the power it seized with 9/11, that it has not only continued to spew old 9/11 lies and thoroughly debunked criminal deceptions (such as the link between 9/11 and Iraq, still militantly repeated by Dick Cheney), it appears to be ready to rewrite the script entirely, even it means contradicting their previous conspiracy theories.

For what reason has KSM been tagged as the �mastermind� of 9/11, after years spent insisting that Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta were the �ringleaders�?

Why is KSM being named (�confessed�) as the man solely responsible for virtually every major terrorist attack and plot since the 1990s? The Bush administration is clearly desperate to create the appearance of triumph for itself in its waning months. Is the Bush administration (Karl Rove) attempting to script a final propaganda� triumph� with the certain secret execution of KSM, the 9/11 �mastermind�?