The Six-Letter Text Message That Led the CIA to the Mastermind of 9/11

A six-letter text message sent by a paid informant led the CIA to the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, which, juxtaposed with the other horrifying ​details exposed in the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report, is a damning indictment of the usefulness of waterboarding and other torture methods.

The capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—named as the "​principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" by the 9/11 Commission Report—was primarily attributed in the torture report to old-school intelligence work. In fact, the torture report suggests that there are "no CIA records to support the assertion that [two tortured suspects] Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, or any other CIA detainee played any role in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."

That's not what the American people were told, however. On September 6, 2006, President George W. Bush noted this in a speech:

"Zubaydah was questioned using these procedures [the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques], and soon he began to provide information on key al-Qa'ida operatives, including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th. For example, Zubaydah identified one of KSM's accomplices in the 9/11 attacks, a terrorist named Ramzi bin al-Shibh. The information Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of bin al-Shibh. And together these two terrorists provided information that helped in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Instead, the torture report attributes the entirety of KSM's arrest to someone known as "Asset X," a CIA informant who was apparently paid $25 million for helping the CIA capture KSM.

As the CIA officer who "handled" Asset X and who was directly involved in the capture of KSM stated, "the operation was a HUMINT [human intelligence] op pretty much from start to finish."

The CIA apparently identified Asset X as a potential informant before the September 11 attacks even transpired, and in the immediate aftermath reached out to ask for his or her cooperation.

Over the next two years, Asset X and the CIA fell in and out of contact. The timeline is hard to follow because many of the events are classified and redacted from the torture report. In early 2003, however, Asset X met with KSM and contacted the CIA afterward. The CIA asked Asset X to try to set up another meeting, and the very next day, Asset X apparently ran into KSM in a surprise meeting.

The most obvious reading of the text is "I am with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed." Pakistani authorities, contacted by the CIA, conducted a raid and captured KSM.

Meanwhile, the CIA conducted torture on suspects who apparently knew nothing of KSM's whereabouts. It didn't take torture to get Asset X to turn on KSM or to get him to cooperate. Instead, it went something like this: