Well, that didn't take long

Posted at CNN's website at 8:28 pm Eastern Time, March 14 (the earliest time stamp I found on Yahoo! News):

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States, has admitted responsibility for those and other major al Qaeda operations, according to the transcript of a hearing at Guantanamo Bay released on Wednesday.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z," Mohammed, speaking through a personal representative, said, according to the transcript of the hearing on Saturday at the U.S. military prison camp in Cuba released by the Pentagon.

Later details said he claimed responsibility for 29 operations plus having had partial responsibility in a couple of others.

Posted at The Guardian's (UK) website at 1:46 am Eastern Time, March 16 (less than 30 hours later):

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claims that he was responsible for dozens of successful, foiled and imagined attacks in the past 15 years relies on a loose definition of the word "responsible." Officials say the 9/11 mastermind was key to some plots but a bit player in others.

The 31 on his list range from the stunningly vicious suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, to others that current and former government officials say were more talk than concrete plans, such as a plot to kill Jimmy Carter and other former U.S. presidents. ...

"I have never known a criminal - either terrorist or otherwise - that didn't exaggerate," said Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and the top Republican on the terrorism panel of the House Intelligence Committee. ...

One official cautioned that many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were "white noise" - designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session.

Interrogation sessions which may well have involved torture. But here's even a third thought beyond puffery and white noise: They've got him, he's nailed, he knows it. But they can only execute him once, only imprison him for one lifetime. So as long as he's toast, why not confess to anything, everything, hoping thereby to take some heat of someone else who is still out there? Besides, if they catch him in a lie, what are they going to do to him that they could not and will not do already?

Footnote, Unintentional Humor Div.: In a follow-up AP article on the effect of Mohammed's capture four years ago on al-Qaeda operations, the reporters tell us that

[i]n his testimony to a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, released in redacted form by the Pentagon on Wednesday, Mohammed claimed involvement in 31 attacks and plots.

"Some are almost surely true," they say.