How Much Did He Really Do?

March 15, 2007 — -- Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the world's most accomplished terrorist or is he just a complete liar? Or both?

Since the suspected 9/11 mastermind confessed to 31 attacks, as well as plots to kill Pope John Paul II, Presidents Clinton and Carter, to use biological weapons such as anthrax, and to bomb targets around the world from Panama and Pakistan to South Korea and Seattle, some of his claims have come under doubt.

Several counterterrorism experts and former intelligence officials believe that Mohammed, who made the mass confession during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, is a fabulist. Their reasons: the lack of evidence to implicate him in many of these plots and his reputation as a self-aggrandizing egotist.

"I get a sense that his ego was enormous, and that he would take credit for anything and everything," said Jack Cloonan, an ABC News analyst and former senior agent on the FBI's bin Laden squad who investigated Mohammed. "What's missing is the evidence and details about the plots -- the fact that he can't provide that shows that he is in lying mode."

Among the claims that provoked skepticism in Cloonan were previously unknown plots to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea and to assassinate President Carter.

Other plots, which Mohammed discussed but for which there is no apparent evidence of his involvement, are the Bali nightclub bombings that killed more than 180 in 2002 and shoe bomber Richard Reid's plan to blow up two planes in 2001.

One confession backed by evidence is Mohammed's claim that he killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2003. In his testimony, Mohammed brags that "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head." And in the execution video, identifying marks on the hand of the masked man holding Pearl's head match those on Mohammed's hands, U.S. officials told ABC News.

It's difficult to understand Mohammed's motives, but they could range from a desire to avoid torture to loyalty to his cohorts in al Qaeda to his ambition to go down in history as a holy warrior, to an active imagination.