Datasets:
shivendrra
/
consolidated-datasets

Dataset card Data Studio Files Community
1
text
stringlengths
0
82.7M
Biden said that after nearly 20 years of war, it was clear that the U.S. military could not transform Afghanistan into a modern democracy.[386] The second emir of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, a close associate of bin Laden, was killed in a U.S. drone strike at his home in Kabul, Afghanistan on July 31, 2022.[387] The impact of 9/11 extends beyond geopolitics and into society and culture in general.
Immediate responses to 9/11 included greater focus on home life and time spent with family, higher church attendance, and increased expressions of patriotism such as the flying of American flags.[388] The radio industry responded by removing certain songs from playlists, and the attacks have subsequently been used as background, narrative, or thematic elements in film, music, literature, and humor.
Already-running television shows as well as programs developed after 9/11 have reflected post-9/11 cultural concerns.[389] 9/11 conspiracy theories have become social phenomena, despite lack of support from expert scientists, engineers, and historians.[390] 9/11 has also had a major impact on the religious faith of many individuals; for some it strengthened, to find consolation to cope with the loss of loved ones and overcome their grief; others started to question their faith or lose it entirely, because they could not reconcile it with their view of religion.[391][392] The culture of America, after the attacks, is noted for heightened security and an increased demand thereof, as well as paranoia and anxiety regarding future terrorist attacks against most of the nation.
Psychologists have also confirmed that there has been an increased amount of national anxiety in commercial air travel.[393] Anti-Muslim hate crimes rose nearly ten-fold in 2001 and have subsequently remained "roughly five times higher than the pre-9/11 rate".[394] As a result of the attacks, many governments across the world passed legislation to combat terrorism.[396] In Germany, where several of the 9/11 terrorists had resided and taken advantage of that country's liberal asylum policies, two major anti-terrorism packages were enacted.
The first removed legal loopholes that permitted terrorists to live and raise money in Germany.
The second addressed the effectiveness and communication of intelligence and law enforcement.[397] Canada passed the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act, their first anti-terrorism law.[398] The United Kingdom passed the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005.[399][400] New Zealand enacted the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002.[401] In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security was created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to coordinate domestic anti-terrorism efforts.
The USA Patriot Act gave the federal government greater powers, including the authority to detain foreign terror suspects for a week without charge; to monitor terror suspects' telephone communications, e-mail, and Internet use; and to prosecute suspected terrorists without time restrictions.
The FAA ordered that airplane cockpits be reinforced to prevent terrorists gaining control of planes, and assigned sky marshals to flights.
Further, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act made the federal government, rather than airports, responsible for airport security.
The law created the Transportation Security Administration to inspect passengers and luggage, causing long delays and concern over passenger privacy.[402] After suspected abuses of the USA Patriot Act were brought to light in June 2013 with articles about the collection of American call records by the NSA and the PRISM program (see Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present)), Representative Jim Sensenbrenner,(R- Wisconsin) who introduced the Patriot Act in 2001, said that the NSA overstepped its bounds.[403][404] Criticism of the war on terror has focused on its morality, efficiency, and cost.
According to a 2021 study conducted under the auspices of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the several post-9/11 wars participated in by the United States in its War on Terror have caused the displacement, conservatively calculated, of 38 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines.[405][406][407] The study estimated these wars caused the deaths of 897,000 to 929,000 people and cost $8 trillion.[407] The U.S. Constitution and U.S. law prohibits the use of torture, yet such human rights violations occurred during the War on Terror under the euphemism "enhanced interrogation".[408][409] In 2005, The Washington Post and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published revelations concerning CIA flights and "black sites", covert prisons operated by the CIA.[410][411] The term "torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the CIA and other U.S. agencies have transferred suspected terrorists to countries known to employ torture.[412][413] As all 19 hijackers died in the attacks, they were never prosecuted.
Osama bin Laden was never formally indicted, but was after a 10-year manhunt killed by U.S. special forces on May 2, 2011 in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.[k][414] The main trial of the attacks against Mohammed and his co-conspirators Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi remains unresolved.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, by Pakistani security officials working with the CIA.
He was then held at multiple CIA secret prisons and Guantanamo Bay, where he was interrogated and tortured with methods including waterboarding.[415][416] In 2003, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Abd al-Aziz Ali were arrested and transferred to US custody.
Both would later be accused of providing money and travel assistance to the hijackers.[417] During U.S. hearings at Guantanamo Bay in March 2007, Mohammed again confessed his responsibility for the attacks, stating he "was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z" and that his statement was not made under duress.[40][418] In January 2023, the US government opened up about a potential plea deal,[419] with Biden giving up on the effort in September that year.[420] To date, only peripheral persons have thus been convicted for charges in connection with the attacks.
These include: Immediately after the attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation started PENTTBOM, the largest criminal inquiry in United States history.
At its height, more than half of the FBI's agents worked on the investigation and followed a half-million leads.[423] The FBI concluded that there was "clear and irrefutable" evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the attacks.[424] The FBI quickly identified the hijackers, including leader Mohamed Atta, when his luggage was discovered at Boston's Logan Airport.
Atta had been forced to check two of his three bags due to space limitations on the 19-seat commuter flight he took to Boston.
Due to a new policy instituted to prevent flight delays, the luggage failed to make it aboard American Airlines Flight 11 as planned.
The luggage contained the hijackers' names, assignments, and al-Qaeda connections.
"It had all these Arab-language [sic] papers that amounted to the Rosetta stone of the investigation", said one FBI agent.[425] Within hours of the attacks, the FBI released the names and in many cases the personal details of the suspected pilots and hijackers.[426][427] Abu Jandal, who served as bin Laden's chief bodyguard for years, confirmed the identity of seven hijackers as al-Qaeda members during interrogations with the FBI on September 17.
He had been jailed in a Yemeni prison since 2000.[428][429] On September 27, 2001, photos of all 19 hijackers were released, along with information about possible nationalities and aliases.[430] Fifteen of the men were from Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt, and one was from Lebanon.[431] By midday, the U.S. National Security Agency and German intelligence agencies had intercepted communications pointing to Osama bin Laden.[432] Two of the hijackers were known to have traveled with a bin Laden associate to Malaysia in 2000[433] and hijacker Mohamed Atta had previously gone to Afghanistan.[434] He and others were part of a terrorist cell in Hamburg.[435] One of the members of the Hamburg cell in Germany was discovered to have been in communication with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was identified as a member of al-Qaeda.[436] Authorities in the United States and United Kingdom also obtained electronic intercepts, including telephone conversations and electronic bank transfers, which indicated that Mohammed Atef, a bin Laden deputy, was a key figure in the planning of the 9/11 attacks.
Intercepts were also obtained that revealed conversations that took place days before September 11 between bin Laden and an associate in Pakistan.
In those conversations, the two referred to "an incident that would take place in America on, or around, September 11" and they discussed potential repercussions.
In another conversation with an associate in Afghanistan, bin Laden discussed the "scale and effects of a forthcoming operation".
These conversations did not specifically mention the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or other specifics.[437] In their annual violent crime index for the year of 2001, the FBI recorded the deaths from the attacks as murder, in separate tables so as not to mix them with other reported crime for that year.[438] In a disclaimer, the FBI stated that "the number of deaths is so great that combining it with the traditional crime statistics will have an outlier effect that falsely skews all types of measurements in the program's analyses".[439] New York City also did not include the deaths in their annual crime statistics for 2001.[440] In 2004, John L.
Helgerson, the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), conducted an internal review of the agency's pre-9/11 performance and was harshly critical of senior CIA officials for not doing everything possible to confront terrorism.[441] According to Philip Giraldi in The American Conservative, Helgerson criticized their failure to stop two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they entered the United States and their failure to share information on the two men with the FBI.[442] In May 2007, senators from both major U.S. political parties (the Republican and Democratic party) drafted legislation to make the review public.
One of the backers, Senator Ron Wyden said, "The American people have a right to know what the Central Intelligence Agency was doing in those critical months before 9/11".[443] The report was released in 2009 by President Barack Obama.[441] In February 2002, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence formed a joint inquiry into the performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community.[444] Their 832-page report released in December 2002[445] detailed failings of the FBI and CIA to use available information, including about terrorists the CIA knew were in the United States, in order to disrupt the plots.[446] The joint inquiry developed its information about possible involvement of Saudi Arabian government officials from non-classified sources.[447] Nevertheless, the Bush administration demanded 28 related pages remain classified.[446] In December 2002, the inquiry's chair Bob Graham (D-FL) revealed in an interview that there was "evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States".[448] September 11 victim families were frustrated by the unanswered questions and redacted material from the congressional inquiry, and demanded an independent commission.[446] September 11 victim families,[449] members of Congress[450] and the Saudi Arabian government are still seeking release of the documents.[451][452] In June 2016, CIA chief John Brennan said that he believes 28 redacted pages of a congressional inquiry into 9/11 will soon be made public, and that they will prove that the government of Saudi Arabia had no involvement in the September 11 attacks.[453] In September 2016, Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act that would allow relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its government's alleged role in the attacks.[454][455][456] The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, popularly known as the 9/11 Commission, chaired by Thomas Kean, governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990,[l] was formed in late 2002 to prepare a thorough account of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks.[461] On July 22, 2004, the commission issued the 9/11 Commission Report, a 585-page report based on its investigations and interviews.
The report detailed the events leading up to the September 11 attacks, concluding that they were carried out by al-Qaeda.
The commission also examined how security and intelligence agencies were inadequately coordinated to prevent the attacks.
According to the report, "We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management".[462] The commission made numerous recommendations on how to prevent future attacks, and in 2011 was dismayed that several of its recommendations had yet to be implemented.[463] The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigated the collapses of the Twin Towers and 7 WTC.
The investigations examined why the buildings collapsed and what fire protection measures were in place, and evaluated how fire protection systems might be improved in future construction.[464] The investigation into the collapse of 1 WTC and 2 WTC was concluded in October 2005 and that of 7 WTC was completed in August 2008.[465] NIST found that the fireproofing on the Twin Towers' steel infrastructures was blown off by the initial impact of the planes and that had this not occurred, the towers likely would have remained standing.[466] A 2007 study of the north tower's collapse published by researchers of Purdue University determined that since the plane's impact had stripped off much of the structure's thermal insulation, the heat from a typical office fire would have softened and weakened the exposed girders and columns enough to initiate the collapse regardless of the number of columns cut or damaged by the impact.[467][468] The director of the original investigation stated that "the towers really did amazingly well.
The terrorist aircraft didn't bring the buildings down; it was the fire which followed.
It was proven that you could take out two-thirds of the columns in a tower and the building would still stand".[469] The fires weakened the trusses supporting the floors, making the floors sag.
The sagging floors pulled on the exterior steel columns causing the exterior columns to bow inward.
With the damage to the core columns, the buckling exterior columns could no longer support the buildings, causing them to collapse.
Additionally, the report found the towers' stairwells were not adequately reinforced to provide adequate emergency escape for people above the impact zones.[470] NIST concluded that uncontrolled fires in 7 WTC caused floor beams and girders to heat and subsequently "caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down".[465] In July 2016, the Obama administration released a document compiled by U.S. investigators Dana Lesemann and Michael Jacobson, known as "File 17",[471] which contains a list naming three dozen people, including the suspected Saudi intelligence officers attached to Saudi Arabia's embassy in Washington, D.C.,[472] which connects Saudi Arabia to the hijackers.[473][474] In September 2016, Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act.[475][476] The practical effect of the legislation was to allow the continuation of a longstanding civil lawsuit brought by families of victims of the September 11 attacks against Saudi Arabia for its government's alleged role in the attacks.[477] In March 2018, a U.S. judge formally allowed a suit to move forward against the government of Saudi Arabia brought by 9/11 survivors and victims' families.[475] In 2022, the families of some 9/11 victims obtained two videos and a notepad seized from Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi by the British courts.
The first video showed him hosting a party in San Diego for Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, the first two hijackers to arrive in the U.S. The other video showed al-Bayoumi greeting the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was blamed for radicalizing Americans and later killed in a CIA drone strike.
The notepad depicted a hand-drawn airplane and some mathematical equations that, according to a pilot's court statement, might have been used to calculate the rate of descent to get to a target.
According to a 2017 FBI memo, from the late 1990s up until the 9/11 attack, al-Bayoumi was a paid cooptee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency.
As of April 2022[update] he is believed to be living in Saudi Arabia, which has denied any involvement in 9/11.[478] On the day of the attacks, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani stated: "We will rebuild.
We're going to come out of this stronger than before, politically stronger, economically stronger.
The skyline will be made whole again".[479] Within hours of the attack, a substantial search and rescue operation was launched.
After months of around-the-clock operations, the World Trade Center site was cleared by the end of May 2002.[480] The damaged section of the Pentagon was rebuilt and occupied within a year of the attacks.[481] The temporary World Trade Center PATH station opened in late 2003 and construction of the new 7 World Trade Center was completed in 2006.
Work on rebuilding the main World Trade Center site was delayed until late 2006, when leaseholder Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed on financing.[482] The construction of One World Trade Center began on April 27, 2006, and reached its full height on May 20, 2013.
The spire was installed atop the building at that date, putting One WTC's height at 1,776 feet (541 m) and thus claiming the title of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.[483][484] One WTC finished construction and opened on November 3, 2014.[484][485][486] On the World Trade Center site, three more office towers were to be built one block east of where the original towers stood.[487] 4 WTC, meanwhile, opened in November 2013, making it the second tower on the site to open behind 7 World Trade Center, as well as the first building on the Port Authority property.[488] 3 WTC opened on June 11, 2018, becoming the fourth skyscraper at the site to be completed.[489] In December 2022, the Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church fully reopened for regular services[490] followed by the opening of the Ronald O.
Perelman Performing Arts Center in September 2023.[491] With construction beginning in 2008,[492] 2 World Trade Center remains as of 2023 unfinished.[493] Construction of a 5 World Trade Center is planned to begin in 2024 and be finished by 2029.[494][495] Christopher O.
Ward, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Executive Director from 2008 to 2011, is a survivor of the attacks and is credited with getting the construction of the 9/11 site back on track.[496] In the days immediately following the attacks, many memorials and vigils were held around the world, and photographs of the dead and missing were posted around Ground Zero.
A witness described being unable to "get away from faces of innocent victims who were killed.
Their pictures are everywhere, on phone booths, street lights, walls of subway stations.
Everything reminded me of a huge funeral, people quiet and sad, but also very nice.
Before, New York gave me a cold feeling; now people were reaching out to help each other".[497] President Bush proclaimed Friday, September 14, 2001 as Patriot Day.[498] One of the first memorials was the Tribute in Light, an installation of 88 searchlights at the footprints of the World Trade Center towers.[499] In New York City, the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was held to design an appropriate memorial on the site.[500] The winning design, Reflecting Absence, was selected in August 2006, and consists of a pair of reflecting pools in the footprints of the towers, surrounded by a list of the victims' names in an underground memorial space.[501] The memorial was completed on September 11, 2011;[502] a museum also opened on site on May 21, 2014.[503] The Sphere by the German sculptor Fritz Koenig is the world's largest bronze sculpture of modern times, and stood between the Twin Towers on the Austin J.
Tobin Plaza of the World Trade Center in New York City from 1971 until the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
The sculpture, weighing more than 20 tons, was the only remaining work of art to be recovered largely intact from the ruins of the collapsed Twin Towers after the attacks.
Since then, the work of art, known in the U.S. as The Sphere, has been transformed into an important symbolic monument of 9/11 commemoration.
After being dismantled and stored near a hangar at John F.
Kennedy International Airport, the sculpture was the subject of the 2001 documentary The Sphere by filmmaker Percy Adlon.
On August 16, 2017, the work was reinstated, installed at the Liberty Park, close to the new World Trade Center aerial and the 9/11 Memorial.[504] In Arlington County, the Pentagon Memorial was completed and opened to the public on the seventh anniversary of the attacks in 2008.[505][506] It consists of a landscaped park with 184 benches facing the Pentagon.[507] When the Pentagon was repaired in 2001–2002, a private chapel and indoor memorial were included, located at the spot where Flight 77 crashed into the building.[508] In Shanksville, a concrete-and-glass visitor center was opened on September 10, 2015,[509] situated on a hill overlooking the crash site and the white marble Wall of Names.[510] An observation platform at the visitor center and the white marble wall are both aligned beneath the path of Flight 93.[510][511] A temporary memorial is located 500 yards (457 m) from the crash site.[512] New York City firefighters donated a cross made of steel from the World Trade Center and mounted on top of a platform shaped like the Pentagon.[513] It was installed outside the firehouse on August 25, 2008.[514] Many other permanent memorials are elsewhere.
Scholarships and charities have been established by the victims' families and by many other organizations and private figures.[515] On every anniversary in New York City, the names of the victims who died there are read out against a background of somber music.
The President of the United States attends a memorial service at the Pentagon,[516] and asks Americans to observe Patriot Day with a moment of silence.
Smaller services are held in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, which are usually attended by the First Lady.
In September 2023, President Joe Biden did not attend services in the affected areas, instead marking the day in Anchorage, Alaska, the first US President to do so since the attacks.[517][518][519] Multimedia Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
The September 11 attacks were a series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 terrorists associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda.
It was the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil; nearly 3,000 people were killed.
The attacks involved the hijacking of four planes, three of which were used to strike significant U.S. sites.
American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 were flown into the World Trade Center’s north and south towers, respectively, and American Airlines flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
United Airlines flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers.
The plane was believed to be headed to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The exact number of victims—particularly the number of those killed at the World Trade Center—is not definitively known.
However, the official death toll, after numerous revisions and not including the 19 terrorists, was set at 2,977 people.
At the World Trade Center in New York City, 2,753 people died, of whom 343 were firefighters.
The death toll at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., was 184, and 40 individuals died outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is considered the mastermind of the attacks, though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the operational planner.
Mohammed came up with the tactical innovation of using hijacked planes to attack the United States, and al-Qaeda provided the personnel, money, and logistical support to execute the operation.
Mohammed Atta was selected to head the operation.
He and 18 other terrorists, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, established themselves in the United States, where some received commercial flight training.
All 19 hijackers died in the attacks, bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, and Mohammed was captured in 2003.
The attacks had a profound and lasting impact on the country, especially regarding its foreign and domestic policies.
U.S. Pres.
George W.
Bush declared a global “war on terrorism,” and lengthy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq followed.
Meanwhile, security measures within the United States were tightened considerably, especially at airports.
To help facilitate the domestic response, Congress quickly passed the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, which significantly expanded the search and surveillance powers of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Additionally, a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security was created.
The collapse of the Twin Towers coated Lower Manhattan in a blanket of toxic dust, and fires at Ground Zero continued to smolder for months after the attacks.
Many first responders who were active in the initial rescue and recovery effort reported respiratory issues, and the CDC estimated that as many as 400,000 people in the surrounding area had been exposed to potentially harmful substances or severe physical or emotional stress as a result of the attacks.
A monitoring and treatment program created in 2011 tracked the health of more than 100,000 people who had been exposed to harmful “9/11 agents.” Among the most common issues reported were chronic sinusitis, GERD, an assortment of cancers, and PTSD.
By 2023 more than 5,700 participants in that program had perished; at that time, it was estimated that the number of lives claimed by September 11-related illness had far surpassed the total lost in the attacks themselves.
September 11 attacks, series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against targets in the United States, the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in U.S. history.
The attacks against New York City and Washington, D.C., caused extensive death and destruction and triggered an enormous U.S. effort to combat terrorism.
Some 2,750 people were killed in New York, 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 in Pennsylvania (where one of the hijacked planes crashed into the ground after the passengers attempted to retake the plane); all 19 terrorists died (see Researcher’s Note: September 11 attacks).
Police and fire departments in New York were especially hard-hit: hundreds rushed to the scene of the attacks, and more than 400 police officers and firefighters were killed.
(Read Britannica’s interview with Jimmy Carter on 9/11 and world affairs.) The September 11 attacks were precipitated in large part because Osama bin Laden, the leader of the militant Islamic organization al-Qaeda, held naive beliefs about the United States in the run-up to the attacks.
Abu Walid al-Masri, an Egyptian who was a bin Laden associate in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ’90s, explained that, in the years prior to the attacks, bin Laden became increasingly convinced that America was weak.
“He believed that the United States was much weaker than some of those around him thought,” Masri remembered, and “as evidence he referred to what happened to the United States in Beirut when the bombing of the Marines base led them to flee from Lebanon,” referring to the destruction of the marine barracks there in 1983 (see 1983 Beirut barracks bombings), which killed 241 American servicemen.
Bin Laden believed that the United States was a “paper tiger,” a belief shaped not just by America’s departure from Lebanon following the marine barracks bombing but also by the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia in 1993, following the deaths of 18 U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu, and the American pullout from Vietnam in the 1970s.
The key operational planner of the September 11 attacks was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (often referred to simply as “KSM” in the later 9/11 Commission Report and in the media), who had spent his youth in Kuwait.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed became active in the Muslim Brotherhood, which he joined at age 16, and then went to the United States to attend college, receiving a degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1986.
Afterward he traveled to Pakistan and then Afghanistan to wage jihad against the Soviet Union, which had launched an invasion against Afghanistan in 1979.
According to Yosri Fouda, a journalist at the Arabic-language cable television channel Al Jazeera who interviewed him in 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned to blow up some dozen American planes in Asia during the mid-1990s, a plot (known as “Bojinka”) that failed, “but the dream of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed never faded.