WASHINGTON D.C., June 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. investigators have identified Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a 37-year-old Kuwaiti man, as being a pivotal player in the September 11 attacks that killed 3,100 people in Washington D.C., New York and Pennsylvania, news agencies reported Wednesday, June 5.

Government and law enforcement officials told The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times that Mohammed is the link between Al-Qa’eda and the September 11 attacks.

"It looks like he's the man, quite honestly," an official of President George W. Bush's administration told The Los Angeles Times.

"We have reason to believe it was his idea to create the plan for the four hijackings and [that he] discussed the plan with ... [Al-Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden," said the official on condition of anonymity.

On September 11, hijackers crashed four planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania.

Mohammed is "perhaps the most wanted" of Al-Qa’eda operatives, said a man The Los Angeles Times identified as an FBI counter terrorism expert close to the investigation. He had already been placed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted List” prior to September 11 and had a bounty on his head, which was raised to $25 million in December of 2001.

"He's one of the people believed to be behind it," a fourth source told The L.A. Times.

"It may be a stretch to say he's the mastermind," he said.

The New York Times also reported that officials did not provide details of his possible involvement.

Mohammed was indicted for his participation in the so-called "Manila plot" to bomb airliners in 1995. And authorities said he was allegedly involved in the 1998 truck bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa, killing 224 people.

Officials discovered Mohammed was part of al-Qa’eda before the September 11 attacks and afterwards came to suspect that he had participated in the attacks.

The New York Times went on to report that Mohammed was related to Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the man said to have been behind the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 and another unsuccessful plot to “bomb American airliners over the Pacific [Ocean].” Other reports indicate that Yousef’s plan also intended to fly the planes into key government buildings, including the Central Intelligence Building in Langley, Virginia, just minutes outside of Washington D.C.

Yousef was arrested in Pakistan in 1995 and convicted in a Manhattan court in 1996. He is currently incarcerated in Colorado.