To the United States, he remains al-Qaeda's logistics mastermind: a terrorist trainer and Osama bin Laden intimate, alleged to have been behind an attempt to blow up Los Angeles International Airport before moving on to help bankroll other attacks. Yet Abu Zubaydah describes himself differently. At a Guantanamo Bay hearing last month, the "high-value" detainee described himself as a hapless and tortured non-fighter, a travel agent, essentially, who had helped mujahedeen of all stripes enter and leave Afghanistan since the mid-1990s. In his first remarks ever to be made public, the 36-year-old Palestinian admitted he used his base in Peshawar, Pakistan, to route scores of Arab militants -- including some from Canada -- into the Khalden, Afghanistan, training camp where they learned to fire weapons, build explosives and even make poisons.

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