New Report on Daniel Pearl’s Murder Reveals Forensic Analysis of Killer’s Veins

The report, “The Truth Left Behind: Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl,” by a team of journalists working at Georgetown University who “spent more than three years investigating the roles of 27 men linked to the 2002 kidnapping and murder,” was published online in conjunction with The Center for Public Integrity.

The report reveals for the first time that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. had used a forensic technique called “vein-matching” to compare images of Mr. Mohammed’s hands — after his capture in Pakistan in 2003 — with those of the man who beheaded Mr. Pearl in a graphic video.

As The Wall Street Journal explains:

The report is the work of the Pearl Project, a three-year endeavor to answer lingering questions surrounding Mr. Pearl’s death. The project was led by former Journal reporter Asra Q. Nomani, who worked with faculty and students from Georgetown University. It is being published Thursday by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based investigative-journalism organization.

Mr. Mohammed has reportedly confessed to the killing on more than one occasion in the past, to American and Pakistani interrogators, but the fact that he may have done so while being tortured cast doubt on the reliability of his statements. After his capture and interrogation by Pakistani agents, Mr. Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding while in C.I.A. custody, before being transferred to the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2003, after The Wall Street Journal reported that American officials had concluded that Mr. Mohammed had killed Mr. Pearl, one official told The New York Times, “We do believe that he was personally responsible for killing Pearl.” At the time, the officials refused to explain what their conclusion was based on.

In his 2006 memoir, “In the Line of Fire,” Pervez Musharraf, who was then Pakistan’s president, wrote that Mr. Mohammad, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, had confessed to taking part in Mr. Pearl’s murder during his interrogation by Pakistani agents.

In 2007, Mr. Mohammed himself reportedly confessed to killing Mr. Pearl in a secret proceeding at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mr. Mohammed said, according to a military tribunal transcript released by the United States government. “For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”

The section of the report detailing the forensic analysis explains that reports of a confession by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, known as KSM to investigators, surfaced soon after his capture and initial interrogation in 2003:

KSM’s culpability was not a sure thing to everyone. His possible role had surfaced in a January 26, 2003, Time magazine story when reporters identified KSM as the man wielding the knife, citing Pakistani police interrogation of a guard, Fazal Karim. Still, could the confession of a top terrorist be believed or was he just eager to boost his own importance by claiming responsibility for a string of high-profile terrorist acts? Further, there was the issue of whether a confession extracted from waterboarding was reliable. Experts say that someone subject to torture will say anything to make it stop.

F.B.I. agent Michael Dick, one of the agents sent to Pakistan immediately after Pearl’s abduction, still was looking for some confirmation in early 2004, some four months after the Journal’s story on KSM. He knew that the alleged 9/11 mastermind was in secret custody. He wasn’t privy to the interrogation tactics used against KSM.

Dick edited the Pearl murder video to create still photos of frames of the video that showed the hand of the masked killer. His idea was to see if the beefy right hand matched KSM’s. He turned to a C.I.A. officer assigned to the F.B.I. as a liaison officer. Dick asked him: Could he send the still to his C.I.A. colleagues holding KSM? The liaison officer agreed to the request. A response soon arrived: “The photo you sent me and the hand of our friend inside the cage seem identical to me.”

The distinguishable feature: the bulging vein that ran across the murderer’s hand. Vascular technology, or “vein-matching,” is a forensics technology that has not been widely tested. It’s popular among some forensics experts, but is not as reliable as other biometrics techniques such as fingerprints. However, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. sometimes use this type of technology in order to identify suspects. By extracting the information of the vascular structure of a hand or finger and converting it into a mathematical quantity, this technology creates a template for each structure and then compares the template of a known individual to a suspect.

The F.B.I. agent was ecstatic. This was informal confirmation, and now he wanted to go through channels to get official documentation to add to the evidence against KSM. He asked Jay Kanetkar, the F.B.I. case agent on the Pearl case, to send a forensic scientist to KSM to confirm the match. Eager to get the evidence, Dick went to the acting chief in his unit, Ed Dickson. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Dickson responded, according to people familiar with the conversation.

The F.B.I. agent was ecstatic. This was informal confirmation, and now he wanted to go through channels to get official documentation to add to the evidence against KSM. He asked Jay Kanetkar, the F.B.I. case agent on the Pearl case, to send a forensic scientist to KSM to confirm the match. Eager to get the evidence, Dick went to the acting chief in his unit, Ed Dickson. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Dickson responded, according to people familiar with the conversation.

The agent protested. Dickson reiterated his point: “Don’t mess with the case.” The caution reflected two concerns: keeping distance from CIA activities and upsetting the Omar Sheikh convictions by bringing in a suspect who actually wielded the murder weapon. The agent walked away, frustrated.