Bush Touts Capture of Mohammed

President Bush suggested Monday that the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an Al Qaeda leader, shows that the United States can simultaneously confront Iraq and pursue those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on America.

He vowed to press the manhunt for other Al Qaeda operatives until the terrorist network is “completely dismantled.”

Bush made his first direct public comments on Mohammed’s capture during an interview with 14 regional newspapers Monday afternoon.

The capture of Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, by a team of U.S. and Pakistani agents early Saturday gave the president a boost as war with Iraq looms.

A number of Democrats have increasingly questioned Bush’s strategy of focusing on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein while downplaying the search for Al Qaeda operatives around the world.

Bush has insisted that there is a link between Al Qaeda and Hussein’s regime, and he has argued that both are natural targets of the war on terrorism.

“I told the American people that this is a different kind of war against Al Qaeda and that we’ll have to hunt them down one at a time,” he told the reporters. “Over the weekend, they saw what I meant.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Bush also touted his tax cut proposal, defended his plan to channel more federal funds to religious charities that perform social services, and denied that he nurses a grudge against Hussein because of Iraq’s foiled attempt to assassinate his father, the first President Bush.

The interview appeared to be part of an emerging White House strategy for the president to reach out in targeted ways to Americans as a decision on going to war with Iraq approaches. On Thursday, he granted an exclusive interview to USA Today.

Greeting the 14 reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Monday afternoon, Bush told those at the gathering that they could help him “explain to people why I make the decisions I make.”

U.S. officials confirmed, meanwhile, that computers, computer disks, phones and documents seized with Mohammed contained a treasure trove of information about Al Qaeda that could help lead to other suspects and possibly thwart terrorist plots underway in the United States and overseas.

“We are hoping that this will lead to substantial additional information on Al Qaeda, on Al Qaeda’s plans and Al Qaeda’s operations,” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said.

At the same time, U.S. officials said they expected that Mohammed would not cooperate in interrogations -- or that if he did talk, he might well provide disinformation about Al Qaeda cells and their plans.

“Anything he tells us, if he tells us anything at all, will be met with about as much skepticism as possible,” said one U.S. official involved in the effort to pry information out of the self-described terrorist mastermind. “But sometimes, he could help us even if he doesn’t intend to, by providing little things here and there that can be corroborated elsewhere and matched up with other intelligence gathered elsewhere.”

That was the case with Abu Zubeida, a top Al Qaeda leader captured last year in Pakistan. He underwent grueling interrogations and provided U.S. officials with information that they knew was false and intentionally misleading. But within that information, interrogators gleaned other data they could use with information garnered elsewhere, the official said.

“There were times he was helping us when he didn’t even know he was helping us,” the official said.

Tom Ridge, secretary of Homeland Security, also expressed skepticism about whether Mohammed would cooperate.

Although Mohammed is a potential source of highly significant information, “we also know that these individuals are trained and programmed in the craft of evasion,” Ridge said. “It will be very, very difficult to extricate information from this guy at this time.

“But there is a potential source of some information here that could help us in the long run defeat Al Qaeda and identify and bring [Osama] bin Laden to justice,” he said.

Mohammed was arrested in the home of a Pakistani man, Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, a local leader of one of Pakistan’s largest Islamic political and religious parties, Jamaat-i-Islami.

Questions about that relationship intensified Monday with the detention in Pakistan of an army major as investigators pressed the search for members of the network that helped hide Mohammed.

Maj. Adil Qadoos, an officer in an army signals regiment that handles field communications, is the brother of Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, whose arrest in a predawn raid Saturday led to Mohammed’s dramatic capture.

Adil Qadoos was taken in for interrogation by agents of the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. He was released late Monday.

Ahmed Abdul Qadoos is accused of renting the apartment where Mohammed and an alleged accomplice were living. The Qadooses’ mother is head of the women’s wing of Jamaat-i-Islami, a powerful hard-line Islamic force in Pakistani politics.

A Pakistani official who described Adil Qadoos’ detention said he was taken in for questioning, not to answer any charges.

“Only Pakistani agencies were involved in the operation, and the major has been detained just to confirm whether he has links with his brother or Khalid Shaikh,” the source said.

In a related development, the unidentified man arrested with Mohammed has been identified as Mohammed Abdur Rehman, a Somali, a senior Pakistani official said.

No immediate information was available on Abdur Rehman’s role in Al Qaeda, but investigators said that the fact that he worked with Mohammed probably makes him important.

Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat denied foreign media reports that Mohammed had been moved out of Pakistan.

“The three captured will remain in Pakistan until we are satisfied with our investigation because Pakistan has its own terrorism concerns,” he told reporters on Monday.

Pakistan had not yet received a request from the United States for Mohammed’s extradition, Hayat said.

In Washington, White House officials said it would be up to Bush to decide whether to subject Mohammed to a military tribunal.

No decisions had been made, according to Fleischer. He added that Mohammed would be accorded “the standard for any type of interrogation of somebody in American custody,” which he defined as “humane” and in keeping with “all international laws and accords.”

Bush’s remarks on Mohammed were his first direct comments since the capture of the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Bush was at Camp David, the presidential mountain retreat in Maryland, when Mohammed was captured. “That’s fantastic,” White House aides quoted the president as having said.

The 14 regional newspapers to which Bush granted the interview were the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Herald, the Baton Rouge Advocate, the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail, the Columbia (S.C.) State, the Detroit News, the Kansas City Star, the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Omaha World-Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Times.

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Special correspondents Zulfiqar Ali in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mubashir Zaidi in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.