The Pentagon Monday issued charge sheets against six Guantánamo captives in the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks, accusing them of conspiring in the killings of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and is seeking to execute them, if convicted.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal advisor for the military commissions, said the men were charged in ``a long-term, highly sophisticated organized plan by al Qaeda to attack the United States of America.''

If the charges make their way through the Pentagon processes, all six would be put on trial simultaneously.

A death penalty case is not assured. A Bush administration appointee at the Defense Department, Susan Crawford, has to decide independently whether they will face a capital crime.

First and foremost among those charged, Hartmann said, was reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a former CIA captive who is quoted in Pentagon transcripts as boasting he was in charge of the plot along with nearly two dozen others, both real and fictional.

Earlier this month, CIA director Michael Hayden confirmed that the CIA waterboarded Mohammed.

Besides conspiracy, they allege murder in violation of the crimes of war and attacking civilians in the hijackings of civilian airliners that slammed into the buildings on Sept. 11, killing 2,973 individuals.

The document, obtained by The Miami Herald, includes a 66-page appendix, which lists, name by name, all 2,973 victims of the attacks.

Hartmann identified the other five who will be tried at the same time as:

• Ramzi bin al Shibh, a Yemeni and alleged al Qaeda cell leader who is described as a key intermediary between some of the hijackers and leaders of al Qaeda, in effect meaning he serve as a control officer. The Newark federal public defender has been assigned to serve as Shibh's lawyer in federal courts, on a different case challenging his detention.

• Walid bin Attash, a Saudi raised Yemeni who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers. ''He is also alleged to have traveled to Malaysia in 1999 to observe airport security by U. S. air carriers to assist in formulating the hijacking plan,'' a Pentagon statement said Monday.

• Ali Abd al Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who allegedly sent about $120,000 to the hijackers to cover, among other things, flight training at U.S. flight schools.

• Al Baluchi's assistant, Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, who allegedly held get the hijackers ''money, western clothing, traveler's checks and credit cards'' for the 9/11 attacks.

• Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi who is about 29, and one of two men that Bush administration officials have at times labeled as the 20th hijacker. He has long been held at the remote Navy base and been subjected to special harsh interrogation techniques approved by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, spelled out in an interrogation log that was at one point leaked to Time magazine.

A Pentagon statement spelled Qahtani's name as Kahtani and described his alleged role as he ``carried $2,800 in cash and had an itinerary listing a phone number associated with Hawsawi.''

''The sworn charges are only allegations,'' Hartmann said at a news conference, held Monday morning after a weekend of news reports that the charge sheets would soon be issued. ``The accused are and will remain innocent, unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.''

Missing from the case is the alleged murder by Mohammed of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, whom the captive allegedly admitted at Guantánamo to beheading with his own hand. Hartmann said they were not included in the charges forwarded by the case prosecutor.

At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino told reportersthere was no link between Hayden's admission last week and the decision to announce charges days after the CIA confirmed it had waterboarded Mohammed and two of the other high-value detainees now held at Guantánamo.

''I can see conspiracy written all over your face, but there was none,'' she told reporters, according to an official transcript. ``As the military said, they were ready to bring the charges and they did that today, when they were ready.''

She added that the prosecutions were a separate matter from President Bush's stated goal of trying to close down the Guantánamo facility -- where the trials would be held.

One problem, she said, was that, in some instances, the home countries declined to take back some of the 277 detainees held as enemy combatants at Guantánamo.

None of the six men have military attorneys. But, under rules for the war court, the Pentagon is to assign them U.S. military officers -- judge advocates general wearing American military uniforms -- to defend them.

In addition, civilian lawyers who get security clearances and volunteer to help on the cases without taxpayer funds may also defend them.

Hartmann pledged the trials would not be held in secret; at times, he said, some evidence might be shielded from the public for national security reasons.

Hartmann said the charges were being translated into the men's native languages -- all Arabic. Once translated, the men would receive them, he said.

In parallel, now that the charges have been announced, Army Col. Steve David, the chief defense lawyer, is empowered to assign the military lawyers to defend them. David, an Indiana judge mobilized to military service, has said his Pentagon's office has been under-resourced for the trials.

Unclear is whether or how additional no-taxpayer-funded civilian lawyers would join the case.

Ret. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Swift, a former JAG now defending Osama bin Laden's driver as an Emory law professor, said Congress made it illegal for the most logical lawyers to participate -- federal public defenders.

Meanwhile, one corporate attorney predicted that few in the big firms would contribute free-of-charge lawyers to the unpopular cases.

''You need someone who is independently wealthy and has no concern for his physical safety,'' said Washington, D.C., attorney David Remes, who has filed petitions on behalf of Yemenis at Guantánamo who are alleged to be low-level al Qaeda operatives.

''No firm with substantial resources that works for corporations is going to take the cases of these men because being accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks is different in kind than being accused of being a mere foot soldier,'' Remes said. ``If the accusations against these men are correct, they really are the worst of the worst.''

The military has yet to spell out how it would execute a Guantánamo captive if it wins a death penalty conviction.

An infrastructure for such a trial is nearly ready. The military earlier this month showed reporters at Guantánamo for military commission proceedings a new, state-of-the-art courtroom capable of trying six defendants simultaneously.

The facility encases 30 observers inside a soundproofed room with an audio kill switch that could prevent reporters and others in the courtroom from hearing a detainee's testimony -- if he tries to spill state security secrets, such as where he was held or how he was treated.

Also Monday, the CIA director Hayden mass e-mailed his agents and other employees declaring the announcement of prosecutions against Mohammed and the five others "a crucial milestone on the road to justice for the victims of 9/11.''

Five of the six men facing charges, he noted, "îwere previously held within CIA's high-value terrorist interrogation program.''

He did not mention that he had previously confirmed that one had been waterboarded, a technique known in some quarters as "water torture'' -- and that CIA considered the tactic legal at the time.

"Our government believes that these six individuals, among others, played important roles in planning and promoting the murder of thousands of innocent people,'' he wrote the intelligence community.

"I would like to recognize the skill and dedication of our officers in the long and difficult fight against terror,'' he added. "From the start, CIA has been vital to the global offensive against al Qaeda, its leaders, and its sympathizers. That includes the detainees who have been charged and, within a judicial process, will be called to account for their actions.''

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