Der Spiegel has a fascinating cover story: "Operation Holy Tuesday - The two chief planners of September 11th have confessed, and the records of their interrogations can now be used to paint a precise picture of the events leading up to the terrorist attack. Their statements also reveal how Osama Bin Laden personally selected the suicide pilots from Hamburg." Snippet:

To the investigators, it is now apparent that the apocalypse in New York only became possible because three threads gradually converged in the mountains of Kandahar. The first thread was the obsession of Sheik Mohammed's clan, the members of which deeply detest the United States. The second was the power that fanatic Osama Bin Laden held over an entire army of religious fanatics with paramilitary training. The third and final thread was the blind willingness to become martyrs within a group of Muslims from Hamburg-Harburg, men who wanted nothing more fervently than to die in the war against the infidels. The history of September 11th began as a private war on a gray Friday in the spring of 1993 - with the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center. On February 26, 1993, Ramsi Ahmed Yussuf, a nephew of Sheik Mohammed, detonated a powerful bomb in the underground parking garage of the WTC. The bomb contained about 600 kilograms of highly explosive nitroglycerin hidden in a white delivery van parked on the B 2 parking level. The explosion ripped a 200-by-100-foot crater into the building's foundation, killing six people. The towers shook. But they did not fall. When he was arrested years later, Yussuf, a bearded, brooding, introverted man with enormous ears, was still enthralled by the brilliant design of his bomb. In 1995, investigators transported him by helicopter to the New York FBI office, and when the twin towers came into view, Yussuf said: "If I had had more money and time to build a bigger bomb, the towers would no longer be standing." And as if he were practically yearning for the paradise he had been promised, Yussuf asked the FBI officials whether his execution would be carried out without delay once he had been sentenced to death. Again and again, it became apparent just how deeply entrenched the hate was within the clan of the Mohammeds. Sheik Mohammed's older brother Sahid also became a member of Al Qaeda, and another brother lost his life fighting alongside the Mujaheddin in their battle with the Soviets. And according to the FBI, "KSM," US investigators' internal abbreviation for the name of Sheik Mohammed, was already involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, acting as one of the masterminds who raised the money to buy the explosives.