Accused 9/11 Planner Studied Jet Propulsion at HBCU

FBI Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist acts, took courses there in thermodynamics, according to David Klett, a mechanical engineering professor at the university. That branch of physics covers the fundamentals of jet engines, propulsion, chemical reactions and combustion reaction.

“About 30 percent of our mechanical engineering students were from the Middle East and I probably taught him thermodynamics and likely more courses,” recalled Klett, who said he was Mohammed’s student adviser. “Those things that he learned in thermodynamics would be useful to someone planning an attack. It came as a real surprise to learn that one of our graduates was among the 10 most wanted terrorists on the FBI’s list and had a $25 million reward on his head. I couldn’t believe it, but obviously it was true.”

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan March 1 by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agents. U.S. officials called Mohammed the key person responsible for organizing the attacks, sending hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing more than 3,000 people.

Charles Watkins David Klett, a mechanical engineering professor at North Carolina A & T, says he was Mohammed’s student adviser.

One of Osama bin Laden’s key associates, Mohammed attended Chowan College in Mufreesboro, N.C., 100 miles northeast of the state capital of Raleigh. But he left after only one semester to attend A&T in Greensboro. There, he earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986. Muslims and Middle Eastern were about 30 percent of the students in the engineering department that year, Klett said.

“I first learned about it (Mohammed’s terrorist acts) in November, when the Los Angeles Times came to campus trying to find background information about him, and the Los Angeles Times wrote a very detailed article about him. It makes me feel bad that somebody was able to use his education for terrible purposes,” said Klett.

Klett also said that Mohammed was probably a quiet student, as he didn’t have a clear recollection of him. One of Mohammed’s colleagues, who lives in Winston-Salem and remembers him well, agreed that Mohammed was a quiet person and said he spent a lot of time in the mosque, according to Klett.

Intelligence experts said they considered Mohammed more important to the al-Qaida network than bin laden, its spiritual leader, because Mohammed had information about all planned attacks, according to news reports. The March 3 online edition of Newsweek reported that Mohammed and others planned to steal gas tanker trucks and crash them into U.S. service stations, and cut the suspension cable on bridges.

Members of the N.C. A&T community weighed how the news affected A&T’s reputation.

“I do not believe A&T’s image is tarnished,” said Aaron Wilson, a junior mechanical engineering major. “That’s just one person’s misguided mind. They were raised and told to hate Americans, so they had that in their minds before they came to A&T. A&T had nothing to do with their way of thinking.

“However, I think it’s going to make A&T less desirable for foreign students because everybody’s going to be watching them and paying close attention to their every move,” said Wilson. “It’s not fair at all because they didn’t do anything. Just because they are foreign doesn’t mean that they have links to al-Qaida.”

A&T’s highly regarded engineering department attracts students from many places, so it is not seen as unusual for the school to enroll many foreign students, as it did when Mohammed graduated in 1986. Joseph Monroe, dean of engineering said that the university’s ability to teach and train are clearly evident and that an education should not be used for acts of terror.

“It shows that he was trained exceptionally well here technically, but it also shows that we need some humanness in our education in the college of engineering as well,” said Monroe. “A good education is valuable but it should be used for the betterment of human kind, not for the destruction of humankind.”

Charles Watkins David Klett with North Carolina A & T students.

Monroe also said that A&T’s image was unblemished.

“At that time, we weren’t actively looking or trying to recognize terror. All of that was left to the Immigration and Naturalization Service,” said Monroe. “There are some [immigration] policies that are coming out, and it shows the power of our engineering program that students are trained very, very well.

“It’s negative for our whole education system, not just A&T’s. I wouldn’t condemn us at all. There was no reason we would have checked what he was going to do with his education,” added Monroe.

N.C. A&T Chancellor James C. Renick, who assumed the job in 1999, agreed that A&T and terrorism should not be linked. “We’re all saddened and shocked,” said Renick. “We’ve graduated generals in the military as well, and it saddens and shocks me that any human being would do something so dastardly. You can link an individual to a university, but you can’t make that cause-and-effect relationship because that person acted as an individual. There are examples that educated people do bizarre things, and people understand that.”

News media have speculated about a terrorist cell in North Carolina. In December, former Sudanese pilot Mekki Hamed Mekki Hamed Mekki , 30, who drove a taxi for Greensboro's United Yellow Cab and had been a full-time freshman at N.C. A&T, agreed to a plea deal to three counts of immigration fraud, the Greensboro News & Record reported.

His arrest in September garnered national attention after the Associated Press, citing two anonymous government sources, reported that investigators believed he had ties to al-Qaida, though he had not been charged with anything related to terrorism.

Chris Wallace is a student at North Carolina A&T State University who is co-editor of The A&T Register.