Arrest of alleged Sept. 11 and Cole plotter in Pakistan hailed as major catch

WASHINGTON -- Pakistani authorities have captured a man accused of playing a leading role in the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of an American warship in Yemen, a catch President Bush called a "major, significant find" in the war against the ailing al-Qaida network.

Waleed bin Attash, also known as Tawfiq Attash or just Khallad, coordinated the activities of at least two of the hijackers who crashed into the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. counterterrorism officials said. He is also one of two figures described as masterminds of the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer on Oct. 12, 2000.

Bush described Khallad as "one of the top al-Qaida operatives" -- saying he ranked just below Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the captured No. 3 figure in the terror network.

Khallad is often described as one-legged but actually is missing his right foot.

"He's a killer," Bush said of Khallad. "He is one less person that people who love freedom have to worry about. ... It was a major, significant find."

Khallad was arrested Tuesday in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi during raids that netted five other al-Qaida suspects. Pakistani and U.S. officials announced his capture Wednesday.

U.S. counterterrorism officials described him as among the top 10 al-Qaida figures who remained at-large.

"This is a big catch," said Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the head of Pakistan's counterterrorism unit. "I think he is very important."

American and Pakistani officials said Khallad, a Yemeni who also held Saudi citizenship, was active in plotting new terrorism. He will be interrogated by officials from both countries.

"With these arrests a major terrorist attack has been averted in Pakistan," said the country's interior minister, Saleh Faisal Hayyat.

In the Cole attack, two suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden dinghy into the Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, ripping a gaping hole in the ship's hull and killing 17 sailors.

Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, captain of the USS Cole when it was attacked Oct. 12, 2000, is a Carson High School graduate.

Lippold is the son of Carson City resident Bee Staheli.

He graduated from Carson High School in 1977 and the U.S. Naval Academy. Lippold took command of the USS Cole in June 1999. He was attached to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, but was at a meeting outside the building when the attack occurred.

The other alleged Cole mastermind, al-Qaida's Persian Gulf operations chief Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was captured in November in the United Arab Emirates.

Two other alleged lower-ranking organizers of the attack recently escaped from a Yemeni prison. They were not believed to be among the six captured this week.

Khallad had also planned an attack on another Navy destroyer in Aden in early January 2000. That attack failed when the bomb boat sank under the weight of the explosives.

U.S. counterterrorism officials further described Khallad as the intermediary between alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March.

In January 2000, Khallad met with the two eventual Sept. 11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The CIA had learned about the meeting, and asked Malaysian authorities to monitor it. The Malaysians learned who was there but not what was discussed.

The meeting gained much greater significance to American counterterrorism officials a year later, when investigators tied Khallad to the Cole plot. His known associates -- including al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi -- suddenly took on new importance.

Despite their association with Khallad, the two operatives were not put on watch lists at U.S. ports-of-entry until months afterward, in late August 2001. A listing might have prevented the two from being allowed into the United States, but the 17 other hijackers were largely unknown to U.S. authorities.

Another person at the January 2000 meeting would later be associated with terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, who traveled to Malaysia later that year. Moussaoui is accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 plotters to commit terrorism.

Khallad was in Afghanistan for much of the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks and was believed to have moved to Pakistan after the Taliban fell, officials said.

Pakistani authorities also recovered 330 pounds of explosives and a large quantity of weapons, according to a statement from Cheema's National Crisis Management Cell, which oversees Pakistan's anti-terrorist activities.

"The recovered items indicate the magnitude" of those planned attacks, the statement said.

Also captured in the raids that netted Khallad was a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Pakistani officials said. American officials had previously described Ali Abdulaziz as active in al-Qaida operations.

Numerous al-Qaida chiefs have been captured in Pakistan since the Taliban fell, as have hundreds of lesser fighters, Pakistani officials say. Many of al-Qaida's remaining operational leaders are believed to be in Iran, and Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy are still thought to be hiding in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Islamabad and Afzal Nadeem in Karachi contributed to this story.