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He admitted it and still. Not one single person has Has been tried and convicted for 9-11. We can't spend 25 years of our lives without Or dad's. My Relationship with KSM. starts from 1993 and continues till today.
If Frank Pellegrino had picked up Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, 9-11 probably never have happened. The reason we still don't have one single verdict is because of the torture program. It's not the way the FBI would have done it. It's not the way I would have done it. We find out the FBI is going to be able to interview KSM.
He spoke to me voluntarily and he told us just about everything about 9-11. He was involved in planning, training operatives, and getting them the funding. It's a disservice to us both and it's a disservice to the American people that this is still ongoing. We are back, and that is some of the special that's going to air on CBS. The Daughters of 9-11 is going to be on tonight at 9 o'clock.
And it's where we find out the first clean confession from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that he was the architect of the whole thing A to Z. And I believe also the 93 bombing after that and wanted to do a ton more. This guy is as evil as he got. And also, this guy went to a U.S. college.
He went to North Carolina AT. He understood our culture and understood the damage he can do. And man, did he do it? Frank Pellegrino joins me now, retired FBI agent who spent over a decade hunting KSM and ultimately got his confession and interrogated him at Gitmo. Frank, great to see you.
Thanks for having me. Sir, sir, what was it like for you to first find out that we got him in 2003? and that you eventually would have a chance, when you found out that you eventually would have a chance to confront her.
Well obviously I was happy when we got them. It had been a long search, so when we finally got him, it was very satisfying. Uh I was hoping at that time I'd be able to talk to him right away. But it was clear that That wasn't going to happen. Um So I went down to headquarters, tried to help out as I could, but It was indicated to me early that we were not going to be involved in the interview initially and that That was going to be the end of our CIA had him first?
They had him, yeah. And at that time, he went under extreme interrogation. Yes. At that time, they were waterboarding. He was waterboarded.
And because he was able to confess to them, but when you got him, What year was that?
Well, we finally got him to speak to him when he was sent to Gitmo. We saw him in January of. two thousand and seven And he had confessed back in 2003, almost the day that we got him.
Well, in 2003, when he was with the agency, Aye. You know, he said a lot of things. What he said to them, he said, according to people, they were set under duress. When we went to speak to him, the whole idea was that it would be a clean team. It wouldn't be.
under the same situations. No water boarding. No waterboarding, no Voluntary.
So you would deprivate. It would all be voluntary. And he uh You came in and and spoke to us and I made it clear to him that he didn't have to talk to us. It was up to him. And he was interested in speaking for a few days.
And when he didn't want to talk anymore, he stopped talking. He said I've had it. I don't want to talk anymore. You speak English?
So he speaks English, you talk to him, and what did he say?
Well, he went through the whole uh What happened? I don't want to get into details because it's still up in the air and everything, but he. He gave us The fact that he was involved in 9-11 and the planning of it and who was involved in it. You know, talked about other plots that they had thought about. We went back in history a little bit, talked about 93, talked about his nephew, Ramzi Yosef.
Talked about the who's been arrested for the 93 bombing, who had rented one of those trucks. Yes, he was arrested, tried in Southern District of New York. He's now in a Supermax prison. He's been in Colorado since, yes.
So that's his nephew. Yes. He was involved in 93 KSN? He sent money. to Ramsey.
660 bucks, not much, but it was something, you know, he knew he was there. I don't know if at the time he uh was aware of any details of what Uh Ramsey Yosef was planning, but he was certainly supporting him. Do you have reason to believe that he knew detail enough during his confession that he was telling the truth? Oh yeah, he was telling the truth. Yeah.
There was no reason at that point for him not to tell the truth. going to gain anything from lying or or uh And and It was consistent with the other evidence and other information that we have. I mean, he's not the only person we have spoken to.
So you put everything together and you could tell whether he's still. It was a puzzle. After 9-11, it wasn't like there was a Napoleon's army standing waiting for us. We had to go find our enemy who was hiding. And you guys did a brilliant job in doing that.
And nobody ever gives you credit. Dismantling al-Qaeda, ISIS that followed, and finding out who was attached to who and who was up against that. You get Abu Zubaida, the first big arrest. You get him in Karachi, I believe it was. I think he was arrested in Lahore.
Lahore, okay. Pakistan. Pakistan. And then you get, soon after, Abu Zubaidah leads to Ramzi bin al-Sheib. Yes.
And then sooner or later you get the mother load, the guy that looks all dumpy and looks like they woke him up in the middle of the night. I think his nickname in college was Bluto, because he was a bit of a partier when he was at North Carolina ANT, and they grabbed him.
So when you grab them, they took him, they realized not only did they want to find out what he was up to, they wanted to stop the next block.
So time mattered when C the CIA got him, right?
Well, time always matters. Listen, when Decisions have to be made, policy decisions have to be made, decisions have to be made. Nothing is perfect. Everything has. Trade-offs.
And if you're going to decide that you need something and you need to do it that way, you're going to have trade-offs. If you then plan to have any kind of trial.
So that decision had to be made and you can argue that decision and and or not. But that's what happens when you make these decisions. You know, if we're gonna do an aggressive kind of interrogation You're gonna have a problem then when you try to bring him into any kind of court.
So was he proud of himself for doing this? Did he take pride in saying this plaque came off and I'm responsible for all these deaths? Yeah, I mean, he was, and that's what he's planning to do. I mean, I think he was surprised. Uh that the buildings went down and it may have struck him as uh A little bit of a of a moment that maybe we Did a little too much here.
We didn't know, you know, if the buildings came down, how are they going to react to that? You know, that's a little bit different than. you know, bombing someplace and the buildings fell down. And I think maybe there was a bit of a lump in his throat that Well, what are they going to do? This might not be good.
It's been said that bin Laden did not anticipate that we were going to respond like this. that after the coal, after the embassy bombings, We didn't do much. And they miscalculated. They did. The one thing he mention was that He said uh I'm not quoting it, but basically said we didn't know what the cowboy was going to do.
Us. Yeah. Frank Poe Greeno, our guest, retired FBI special agent, spent over a decade hunting people like KSM. He's on a special tonight, Daughters of 9-11. It's on CBS at 9.
Personally, as somebody who tried to read everything possible, talk to important people like you along the way. I would love to see the day this guy got justice, but I also would like to unwind why he thought this was necessary. Why is a guy that understood America thought I want to do the best I can to hurt America? What do you think it is?
Well, you know, it's interesting. This whole family has a history of being involved in this stuff. his brothers, his uncles, um Ramsey Osa's father was involved. They grew up on the Iranian side of. uh in Balochistan, the Iranian side of that border and and uh They were Sunni.
They lived in a bit of a Shiite area, so there was always some conflict there.
So I think they grew up with the. With the uh you know, that kind of anger. And and They just bought into it. They bought into the issues. I don't know, it's they found some of what what they saw here disturbing.
Um you know, why people took good care of their lawns or or why Uh no Women would dress provocatively, and it it it bothered them. And I mean, why it should bother them enough to. bombers like that. It makes no sense to anyone. But they bought into it like a lot of young people did at the time.
Because you study this. You do have to, in the FBI, study motivation, right? Yeah. So You had to unwind the next plot. Do you feel there were more coming down the pike?
There were always more coming down the pike. As scripted as this one? Um I think after 9-11 when we then were very aggressive both Trying to find these guys. We were looking for KSM before 9-11. We almost had him in gutter.
There was another chance we popped. What do you mean them? Him? We almost had KSM in Gutter in 1995. We knew he was there, we went there.
Because you thought he was part of 93? No, because he was part of the Bojinka plot. He was part of that plot. Yeah, but 11 planes flying from Southeast Asia to the United States. And you found that out when something exploded in the Philippines in a lab.
No, there was a fire in their apartment. In Ramsey Osuf and uh Smoke was going out the window. Cops came. Ramsey Oscar was a fugitive at that time, so we went to the Philippines. We found out they had this other plot.
and that it included KSM. He wasn't there at the time. But we did indict him. for that in nineteen ninety six. And that's what we were looking for him before 9-11 uh ever happened here.
Um Interesting was in Qatar. Felt comfortable there? Yeah. Um yeah. A lot of people distrustful of Cutter.
Are you? I'd be. Yeah, what what what's my involved in them other than this. And and this makes me distrustful. They knew he was there.
And then Supposedly, they were watching him for us when we were getting ready to try to make a plan to grab him. And then they lost him. country the size of Rhode Island, they lost it. Um Unacceptable. You know, and and How do you lose them?
We are there. We have a plane ready to take them back and indict him. An indicted guy, and they lose him. I mean, yeah. Hey, hey guys, back in the control room, if you would queue up the Bill Clinton sat, the one from yesterday, let me know when it's ready.
I just wanted, because I had a chance to talk to Bill Clinton a couple of days after. We're going to pull it up in a second. When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession has been thrown out when he's going to be tried in 2028, Uh the reasoning behind that.
Well, the reason my understanding from reading the ruling was The judge determined, and he said he was basing it just on the voluntariness of the interview. that he felt that we did not do enough. to separate how he was treated before to this interview now. Ah. You know Which I found a little bit frustrating because He was still in jail.
He was a prisoner. And it was four years. And yeah, some time had gone by. We were different people interviewing, and we made it clear to him he's not in CIA custody now. This is a different type of interview.
And he was happy to talk to us for the moment.
So it's a BS in your your view, it's a BS judge decision. I I thought I thought, listen, this terrorist first attitude with these judges is ridiculous. I think if he I would have been happier if the judge would have come out and said, listen, there's no way I can. Say this is voluntary because of what had happened before. If you want to make that legal decision, I may disagree with it, but I understand that, but don't say that.
We didn't do enough to separate people. How about asking you?
Well, we had to. I was going to say, Frank Palgrino, I need to see you.
Well, we had a hearing in 2023 on this issue down in Gitmo. And I was on the stand for nearly a week. And uh It was a different judge. Judges. Rotate.
That judge understood. I don't know. Maybe. But he didn't have to make the decision. Do you think he'd confess again if you walked in there?
Where does he want to live now? Yeah. Well I I I I think he Believes he's not going anywhere, and I, you know, I think he would continue to talk. You do. That's interesting.
I do. I mean, his lawyers wouldn't let him, but I think he would continue to talk. He's lawyered up right now. Oh, yeah. Didn't they have lawyers then?
Well, no. Um when we interviewed him in 2007, And this was The judge brought this up too. They weren't charged at that point. in the military.
So, the legal advice we got was that since he's not charged. He doesn't have any right to attorney at that point.
So he asked us, you know, do I have can I get an attorney? And we would say, well, you're not charged yet, so you don't have a right. If you get charged, we provide an attorney. I'm not sure this is going to help you, but I like your opinion on this.
So a couple of days after 9-11, I was outside the armory. and Bill Clinton came from Australia. landed and said, if anyone in the press wants to talk to me, I'm available. There was a story in the Wall Street Journal that he had a shot at him before he left in the lame in that portion after George W. I it might have been the part when George W and Al Gore are going back and forth on who the next president would be.
And he didn't take the shot.
So I asked him that. Listen. Mr. President, there's a report today that you had a good, the best shot at this guy in December, the waning weeks of your presidency, and at the last minute you said no, too much of a risk. How true is it?
No, it's not true. The best shot we had at him. Was when I bombed it, Osama bin Laden was when I bombed his training camp in 1998. And we just missed them by a matter of hours, maybe even less than an hour. feel somewhat responsible.
Well let me say this. We uh tripled the intelligence budget for counterintelligence, for counterterrorism. because I believe, as I said, that these kinds of threats would be the most likely ones. Just I just want your your opinion on that. Yeah, I mean my understanding was that You know, there was a group set up, and everybody has heard about it, in the agency, and we kind of worked together with them a little bit in order to locate KSM during the 90s.
Um And It was basically run by the CIA, and they did a great job. I know they've got some bad press over the years about. Uh uh Especially the guy who led them, but George Tennant. No, no, he was the director, the guy who led this group. Oh.
But I mean, he was a workaholic guy, and he located him a few times and gave the policymakers an opportunity. And political decisions were made to do it or not do it. Do you think Clinton did everything he could to get bin Laden? You know, I think it's important that people look at it. Through the lens.
of the 9-11 not happening. Everything post 9-11 has a different feel to it.
So before 9-11 You know, he asked, look, do I want to send Marines in and lose 100 Marines for a guy that nobody knows or cares about? Obviously, he turned out to be an important person, but that's a decision he's got to make. Frank, it's been great to talk to you. Hopefully, we would do this again. The Daughters of 9-11 on CBS tonight at 9, Frank Pellegrino.
Who interrogated and got a confession from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9-11 attacks as we sit here in Jersey City overlooking downtown New York City. Frank, great to see you. Great to be here. Thanks for everything you do. You bet.
Back in a moment. You're with Brian Kilmead.
