In January 1995, the investigation of the first World Trade Center attack made a major breakthrough. Philippine police discovered a fingerprint in the bombers' Manila apartment. It was traced to Ramzi Yousef, who had escaped back to Pakistan. Now, however, he was the target of a worldwide manhunt directed from the White House. Richard Clarke, head of counterterrorism at the time, recalls, "So when we put together the fact that the man, who had been the ringleader of the World Trade Center attack in 1993, was now planning to bomb American aircraft with these sophisticated bombs in '95. We thought, my God, this guy is the real thing. He's a major threat and it's him personally involved in these things. We have to find him."

In Pakistan, the manhunt for Ramzi Yousef intensified. Aircraft dropped 37,000 matchbooks, which featured his picture and a 2-million-dollar reward for information leading to his arrest. It worked.

Ramzi Yousef, captured

On February 7, 1995, Ramzi Yousef was arrested in Islamabad. He had been betrayed for money by one of his accomplices. Yousef was picked up in Pakistan by a U.S. military plane. The flight back to the United States would take twenty-six hours. The FBI did not want to touch down in any country that could challenge its jurisdiction over Ramzi Yousef. And so the plane was refuelled numerous times in the air.

Once in New York, Yousef was taken by helicopter into downtown Manhattan. He was in the custody of the lead FBI agent in the World Trade Center investigation Bill Gavin, "New York just looked beautiful that night, crystal clear, crisp, lights twinkling. And as, of course, we had him with a hood on, and as we come down the river we took the hood off and get to about 34th street where the Empire State Building was on one side, and I said to him -'Look straight ahead, see that Ramzi, the Trade Centers are still standing there, aren't they?' And in his little accent he said --'They wouldn't be if I had enough money and enough explosives.' Right up to that moment, the bravado was incredible."

Raghida Dergham,
Correspondent, Al-Hayat

Yousef was sentenced to two hundred and forty years in prison. He gave only one interview, to the Arabic newspaper, Al-Hayat. He told correspondent Raghida Dergham about a new Islamic militant group that would rise up to challenge the United States, "He was speaking about a network, an international network, a network all over, different countries, different nationalities. Eventually, I said, my goodness, he was talking about al-Qaeda. He was telling us a lot about al-Qaeda."  

Ramzi Yousef might have given some key clues about al-Qaeda and its intentions, but few in the US government were listening. Thomas Kean, the Chair of the National Commission investigating 9/11, says that American authorities made a grave mistake by not pursuing Yousef's backers. They felt they had their man. Kean remembers, "We had caught Yousef and he was the mad bomber, as far as we were concerned. He was the one who tried to blow up the World Trade Center One. He was the one who tried to do the Bojinka plot. He was the one who tried to get the Pope and blow him up. He was the one that wanted to get the President when he was in Manila and blow him up. I mean, this was a one-man squad to try and blow up people."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind behind 9/11.

But Yousef was not a one-man squad. While in prison, he made a key mistake and placed a call to his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. American investigators soon realized Mohammed had provided financing for the first World Trade Center attack, and had played a central role in the plot against US commercial airliners. He would go on to become the mastermind of the 9/11 operation.

In 1995, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had taken refuge in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Members of the royal family there were known supporters of Islamic militants. The U.S. government decided to try to kidnap Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and bring him back to face American justice, but Richard Clarke says there was no great enthusiasm for the job. "So we asked CIA if they could go into Qatar without the permission of the local authorities and secretly snatch this guy. It didn't seem like a big request. Well, it turned out it was. The CIA, after a lot of analysis, came back and said no, they couldn't do it. They didn't have the capability. It flabbergasted me. We then turned to the military and said, 'well, can you go in and snatch him?' They came back with a plan that was akin to the invasion of the country. It wasn't a small 12-person unit jumping out of a couple of Chevy Suburbans. It was something that even the Qataries would have seen coming. So we were somewhat stuck and we escalated this so that it was discussed at the cabinet level."

The Clinton cabinet decided to appeal directly to the Emir of Qatar for assistance in the arrest and extradition of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Clarke explains, "Shortly after we had that contact, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed fled the country. So it does seem that someone in the Qatari government, even though we tried very hard to restrict the information to senior levels of government, someone tipped him off and he got away." After his escape, the FBI issued a wanted poster for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He was indicted in the United States on charges related to the plot against US aircraft, but American investigators lost his trail.

He would come back to haunt them. Mohammed had disappeared into Afghanistan, where he would pursue his dream of attacking the United States with commercial airliners. He would find a new backer for his plans, the mysterious Saudi financier, Osama bin Laden.