(Including new and previously untold 9/11 trial testimony)
By Anthony C Heaford, 22 October 2019 (Last edit: 15 Sept 2022)
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) is the self-confessed al Qaeda member who claims to have masterminded the 9/11 attacks. He is awaiting trial in Guantanamo Bay military prison, the star attraction of that judicial circus.
I met KSM at 9 a.m. on Friday 26 September 1997, just 30-minutes before I was taken to a second meeting at the training base besides al Qaidah town in Yemen. I've detailed that meeting with KSM in my report here and spoken about it in my video testimony here, but there’s still one detail that I've never shared, until now.
It was Mr Saeed Alrobaidi, a claimed Omani national and managing director of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group HQ in Taiz, who assembled the group photo below and who introduced KSM when he entered the reception office from a side door, just a moment before the photos were taken.
KSM entrance to the room was a grand affair, a hush descending on the room as the side door was opened opened and as he came in Mr Saeed announced “This is the Engineer” (KSM’s nom-de-guerre within al Qaeda).
New and previously untold 9/11 trial testimony
Once KSM had entered the room the side door closed quietly behind him, shut by an unseen person on the otherside, inside the side office. Saeed Alrobaidi, “the Chief”, took the first photo and Mohamad A. Salem’s assistant took the second; I’ve identified all participants below:
1. Mohamed A. Salem - the HSA Group HQ General Manager and the US embassy’s contact at the site as detailed in this report. Mohamed took me to the meeting besides Al Qa’idah town on 26 September 1997.
2. Saeed Alrobaidi - the director of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group HQ compound at PO Box 5302, Taiz, Yemen. Called "the Chief” by other employees and who intorduced me to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
3. Anthony C Heaford - me, a visiting service technician who'd given HSA employees a travel warning about a hijacked civilian airliner attacking the WTC
4. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the self-confessed al Qaeda member, accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks. Currently in Guantanamo Bay Prison.
5. Ahmed al-Darbi - a Saudi national, al Qaeda’s former-mechanic and a former Guantanamo Bay detainee too, released to Saudi custody in 2018
6. General manager’s assistant - name unknown
7. The Silent Hand - a person who chose to remain hidden in the side office
The Silent Hand
These photos mark the commencement of the 9/11 plot and should be the starting point for the 9/11 trial investigations; I can’t stress their significance enough. But why would the US embassy contact Mohamed A. Salem and Saeed Alrobaidi have no qualms about being photographed with senior al Qaeda members whilst the ‘silent hand’ in the adjoining office stayed hidden? Whose identity was so secret and guarded that maintaining their anonymity would take precedence above linking a publicly known US embassy contact and a billionaire to al Qaeda?
I’ve contemplated those questions endlessly and from the availble information I’ve researched, combined with my considerable insight into events, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: the silent hand that opened and closed the door for KSM was part of the United States intelligence services.
Billy Waugh, a US special forces veteran of Vietnam and a longtime contractor for the CIA has freely admitted to training al Qaeda in Yemen and of discussing the group’s propensity to attack civilian targets. Billy even had the audacity to write about these assignments in his 2004 autobiography. As with Mohamed A. Salem and Saeed Alrobaidi in 1997, Billy Waugh and the CIA appear to consider themselves beyond reproach for their work with al Qaeda. I’m testing that assumption of theirs here.