Waleed Mohammed Bin Attash, long suspected of plotting the bombing of the USS Cole, confessed to planning the attack during a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon transcript released Monday.He also said he helped plan the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 213, the transcript said. Seventeen sailors were killed and 37 injured when suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the guided missile destroyer on Oct. 12, 2000.
"I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives," bin Attash said when asked what his role was in the attacks on the Cole and the embassies. "I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation, buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation."
The release of Bin Attash's transcript came five days after the Pentagon released the record of hearings held for three other high-value suspects at Guantanamo. One of them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confessed to nearly three dozen plots including the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., according to the transcripts.
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