Khalid and Osama clashed over 9-11 plan

LA Times:

To hear Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed tell it, Osama bin Laden was a meddling boss whose indiscretion and poor judgment threatened to derail the terrorist attacks.

He also saddled Mohammed with at least four would-be hijackers who the ringleader thought were ill-equipped for the job. And he carelessly dropped hints about the imminent attacks, violating Mohammed's cardinal rule against discussing the suicide hijacking plot.

The repeated conflicts between the two Al Qaeda leaders emerged last week during the penalty phase of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Jurors heard new details of the plot from the interrogation summaries of several captured Al Qaeda officials, including an extraordinary account of a series of interrogations of Mohammed.

Mohammed described Al Qaeda in a written statement for his U.S. interrogators as an almost mystically efficient corporation that operates in ways Americans would never understand.

The portly Kuwaiti, who had studied engineering in the U.S. and was captured in Pakistan in 2003, told his interrogators that they could learn a lot from Al Qaeda, the organization.

"You must study these matters to know the huge difference between the Western mentality in administration and the Eastern mentality, specifically at Al Qaeda."

The hallmark of the system, he said, was unquestioned control: Everyone up the chain of command did as they were told, didn't ask questions and never bucked authority — all for the common cause of the enterprise, which in this case was killing as many Americans as possible.

"I know that the materialistic Western mind cannot grasp the idea, and that it is difficult for them to believe," Mohammed wrote. "But in the end," he gloated, "the operation was a success."

Yet Mohammed describes a terrorist outfit fraught with the same conflicts and petty animosities that plague many American corporations. Mohammed describes himself in particular as having to fend off a chairman of the board who insists on micromanaging despite not knowing what he was doing.

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Actually the top down management style imitates the Soviets. One of its primary weaknesses is the inability of local commanders to adapt to a changing situation. Their management style certainly has not been effective under attack from US and coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.