Word: ladens
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When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed first floated the plan to Osama bin Laden in 1996, it proposed the hijacking of 10, not four, planes, on both the East and West coasts. In addition to the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the Capitol or White House, possible targets included CIA and FBI headquarters, unidentified nuclear-power plants and the tallest buildings in California and Washington State. Mohammed hoped to pilot the 10th plane himself and land it after killing all the adult male passengers. He then planned to make a fiery, anti-American speech on the tarmac and release all the women...
...LADEN WAS MORE INVOLVED...
...Laden, it turns out, was more of a micromanager than he has often been portrayed as. The commission says bin Laden personally gave Mohammed the go-ahead to begin laying the groundwork for the attack at a meeting in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in early 1999. Over the following 12 to 18 months, bin Laden chose or accepted oaths from all 19 of the eventual hijackers and tapped Mohammed Atta to be the mission's leader. Throughout the planning stage, bin Laden was the one who scaled back the more ambitious proposals. The key sources of the new information are Mohammed...
...Laden, the detainees claimed, did not always get his way. As early as mid-2000, he was so incensed by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that he told Mohammed to go ahead with the mission right away. Twice more in 2001, bin Laden pushed in vain for the operation to start. In the end, he did assert ultimate authority in ordering the attacks, over the opposition of senior al-Qaeda officials and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who were worried that a direct attack on the U.S. would provoke a war with the U.S. or trouble with Pakistan...
...commission dispels the idea that bin Laden is worth as much as $300 million. Though he did collect $1 million a year in inheritance until he was cut off in 1994, he relied on fund raising to support al-Qaeda's $30 million annual budget. None of that money apparently came from the Saudi government or the wife of its ambassador to Washington, as has been previously alleged...