| On September 16, 2001 Osama bin Laden issued the following statement via al-Jazeera in
reference to the 9/11 attacks: "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been
carried out by individuals with their own motivation." [1] |
 | On December 9, 2001 U.S.
military forces in Jalalabad found a video tape of bin Laden taking credit for the attacks [2].
Researchers such as Jim Hoffman have expressed doubt that the man who appears in the video is actually Bin
Laden. [3].
On December 27, 2001, a second bin Laden video was broadcast on al-Jazeera [4]. The tape was reportedly made after
November 16, 2001 [5]. There were notable
differences in the appearance of bin Laden in the two tapes. |
| Some accounts claimed bin Laden was suffering from Hepatitis C, [6] and Peter Bergen said of the
tape “This is a man who was clearly not well. I mean, as you see from these pictures here, he's really, by
December [2001] he's looking pretty terrible. … he's barely moving the left side of his body. So he's clearly
got diabetes. He has low blood pressure. He's got a wound in his foot. He's apparently got dialysis ... for
kidney problems.” [7] |
 |
| The recording was dismissed by the Bush administration as sick propaganda possibly designed to
mask the fact the al-Qaeda leader was already dead. "He could have made the video and then ordered that it be
released in the event of his death," said one White House aide. [8] Other prominent
figures have stated bin Laden is “probably” dead, these people include Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf [9],
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai [10], and US Federal Bureau
of Investigation's counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson [11].
On December 26, 2001 FOX News
reported “Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan
Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.” [12] The World Tribune
subsequently reported “Israel and the United States assess that Bin Laden probably died in the U.S. military
campaign in Afghanistan in December [2001]. They said the emergence of new messages by Bin Laden are probably
fabrications.” [13]
On
September 9, 2002 an audio tape purportedly made by bin Laden was broadcast on al-Jazeera. [14] US intelligence officials
concluded the tape was genuine [15],
but researchers at the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, in Lausanne, were 95%
sure the recording was a fake. [16] The researchers have refused to
verify other tapes [17]
On February 12, 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate panel that he had reviewed a
transcript of a message from bin Laden stating he was “in partnership with Iraq" which was to be broadcast on
al-Jazeera. [18] Al-Jazeera
initially denied having the tape, [19] but subsequently located it. [20] |
 | On October 29,
2004, two days before the US elections, the Arab television network al-Jazeera sprung an October Surprise by
broadcasting a videotape of a healthy looking bin Laden addressing the people of the United States in which he
took responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks. He also condemned the Bush government's response to
the attacks, and presented the attacks as part of a campaign of revenge and deterrence begun after personally
seeing the destruction of the Lebanese Civil War in 1982. See 2004 Osama bin Laden video. |
President Bush opened up a six-point lead over John Kerry in the first opinion poll to include
sampling taken after the videotape was broadcast. [21]
Walter Kronkite found the video very convenient for the Bush administration, and said of it “I'm a little
inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he
probably set up bin Laden to this thing.” [22]
On 23 May 2006, another
audiotape of bin Laden surfaced on the internet. On the tape bin Laden claims that it was he alone who
assigned the hijackers to perform the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and that Zacarias
Moussaoui had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. "He had no connection at all with Sept. 11. I am the one in
charge of the 19 brothers and I never assigned brother Zacarias to be with them in that mission. I am certain
of what I say because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers ... with the raids," said bin Laden who
was speaking about the 9/11 hijackers. He also claimed that all of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay had
nothing to do with the September 11th attacks" [23]
. |
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