Bin Laden Tape

washingtonpost.com

Bin Laden Warns U.S. Voters
'Your Security Is in Your Own Hands,' He Says on Videotape

By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 30, 2004; Page A01

Osama bin Laden injected himself into the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign, warning that American voters will be held accountable for electing any president who seeks to destroy al Qaeda and persecutes Muslims.

"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda," bin Laden, looking thinner but healthier than in previous tapes and speaking in a calm voice, said on a videotape broadcast yesterday. "Your security is in your own hands."

Bin Laden, in his first videotaped address in three years, displayed a fluency with American culture, mentioning "Manhattan," the USA Patriot Act and the 2000 election controversy in Florida. He made no explicit threat and did not issue a call to arms, as he has done since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Although he directed statements to the American public, many intelligence and other counterterrorism experts concluded bin Laden's primary goal was to use the U.S. campaign season to enhance his public profile rather than to sway the election.

"The tape is more about his own audience, about getting himself reelected as the head of the movement, than anything else," said Winston P. Wiley, former CIA deputy director of intelligence.

But the al Qaeda leader's appearance so close to Election Day prompted President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry to interrupt campaigning to react. It also reignited the speculation over whether the world's most wanted terrorist favors one candidate.

Inside the CIA, one senior U.S. counterterrorism official said, "I've heard it argued either way . . . but listen to what he's saying. It doesn't matter who's president."

Bush supporters have generally said bin Laden would like Kerry elected, in the expectation of taking the heat off his network; Kerry supporters point to jihadist Web sites' recent statements that Bush's policies have so inflamed the Muslim world that he is their best recruiting draw. Each side disputes the other's interpretation.

"He's injecting himself into the campaign to show he's a world player," said Daniel Benjamin, a Clinton administration counterterrorism official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In the tape, bin Laden stands at a lectern in white and gold robes before a brown background. His environs are not visible, a sharp contrast to previous tapes that have shown him walking through rocky passes.

A CIA spokesman said analysts had a "high degree of confidence" in the tape's authenticity after performing voice and facial analysis. He said the tape, broadcast on the Arabic-language al-Jazeera network, displayed the date of Sunday, Oct. 24.

It was the first time since December 2001 that bin Laden both appeared and spoke on a videotape, he said. A videotape released in September 2003 showed him walking with senior al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, but there was no audio, and officials believe the video could have been old. An audiotape believed to have been recorded by bin Laden was released with it.

The spokesman noted that the address broadcast yesterday "lacked an explicit threat" and that the al Qaeda leader reiterated grievances against the United States and Israel.

In the speech, bin Laden attacked Bush, his father and their closeness to the Saudi monarchy.

Speaking of former president George H.W. Bush, bin Laden said, according to an Associated Press translation: "He wound up being impressed by the royal and military regimes and envied them for staying decades in their positions and embezzling the nation's money with no supervision."

"He passed on tyranny and oppression to his son, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the pretext of fighting terror. Bush the father did well in placing his sons as governors and did not forget to pass on the expertise in fraud from the leaders of the [Middle East] region to Florida to use it in critical moments."

Bin Laden said he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center towers by Israel's 1982 attack on Lebanon, in which U.S. battleships aided with bombardments.

"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, I got the idea of punishing the oppressor the same way, by destroying towers in America so that it would taste some of what we have tasted and stop killing our children and our women," according to the SITE Institute's translation.

Bin Laden also ridiculed President Bush's initial reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks. He said Bush spent precious time "listening to a child discuss her goat," a reference to the minutes after Bush learned of the first attack and continued to sit in a Florida classroom listening to children read. "This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations." Bin Laden made several unusual references to "freedom." Juan Cole, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs at the University of Michigan, said bin Laden is probably "annoyed that Bush has portrayed him as an enemy of freedom."

Cole said bin Laden may also be concerned about the recent election in Afghanistan and the backing the United States has gotten in Iraq for elections from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite leader, and he may be "feeling pressure from the success of the electoral process."

Bush has rarely spoken to reporters in his final campaign sprint, but he paused beside Air Force One in Toledo to address the tape.

"Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country," he said. "I'm sure Senator Kerry agrees with this. I also want to say to the American people that we're at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail."

About the same time, Kerry told reporters in West Palm Beach, Fla.: "As Americans, we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. They are barbarians. And I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes. Period."

Terrorism expert Rita Katz, founder of the SITE Institute, said she believes it is significant that the tape is being released during Ramadan, because al Qaeda publications have urged attacks during this time.

The SITE Institute reported on Oct. 1 that it had come across an Islamist message board posting predicting release of an audiotape. It said: "One of the brothers is going to post links to a new audiotape by Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, God Protect and Support him. He shall do so after the sunset prayer, Saudi time."

Staff writers Mike Allen, Nora Boustany and Susan Schmidt and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

transcript of tape:
BIN LADEN TRANSCRIPT
FRI OCT 29 2004 17:45:46 ET
Newsreader: A new message from Bin Laden to the American people about the reasons and resulats of the 9/11 attacks.
Newsreader 2: The head of AL Qaeda says the continuation of us policy will lead to the repetition of what happened.
Male presenter: The head of AL Qaeda organization directed a message to the American people and this video and audio apearence in this tape which Jezeera required for the first time for two years. In the beginning of his message, he spoke about the reasons why they chose the US to execute 9/11..
OBL: You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results. I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. He should tell us why we didn't hit Sweden for instance. Its known that those who hate freedom don't have dignified souls.like the 19 who were blessed. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security.
Female presenter: Bin Laden spoke for the first time about the main reasons he thought of executing Sept 11 attacks, confirming that the Israeli operation in Lebanon was the first incident where he thought of it.
OBL: I am so surprised by you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of sept 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you, and obscuring the main reasons and therefore the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before. I will tell you the reasons behind theses incidents.
I will be honest with you on the moment when the decision was taken to understand. We never thought of hitting the towers. But after we were so fed up, and we saw the oppression of the American Israeli coalition on our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind and the incidents that really touched me directly goes back to 1982 and the following incidents. When the US permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet. In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many meanings I cant explain but it resulted in a general feeling of rejecting oppression and gave me a hard determination to punish the oppressors. While I was looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to my mind to punish the oppressor the same way and destroy towers in the US to get a taste of what they tasted, and quit killing our children and women.
Male presenter: Bin Laden considered in his message that the results of Sept 11 were successful in his opinion and as a reason of that, he said that the similarity between the administration of Bush the father and the arab regimes said Bush learned so much from them during his visits.
OBL: We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it th e Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.
Female Presenter: Bin Laden considered the way Bush dealt with the first moments of Sept. 11, giving a good chance to the executors of Sept. 11 to complete it.
OBL: We agreed with Mohamed Atta, god bless him, to execute the whole operation in 20 minutes. Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank god.
Male presenter: the final part of the message is that the security of the Americans depends on the policy that they execute despite the winner of the elections.
OBL: Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each state that doenst mess with our security has automatically secured their security.
Female Presenter: In Bin Laden's message he approached other points. He pointed to the contradiction which considers oppression and killing of innocents a legal act. They formed an international law as bush the father did with the children of iraq according to bin laden. Bin Laden pointed to the millions of pounds of explosives dropped on Iraqi children as bush his son had done, as he said to remove an old agent and install a new agent to help instealing the oil of iraq. And bin laden said the events of 9/11 came as an answer to this oppression and said that if the answer to this oppression is considered bad terror, then we need to do it. And he stressed that he wants to deliver this message to the Americans in words and in deeds since the 9/11 events. He reminded Americans of a few warning messages through various news media like Time Magazine and CNN and other Arab and correspondents since 1996. He warned them of the conswquences of their countries policies. He talked abou t the damage Sept 11 caused the US economy and that it cost close to a trillion dollars. He talked about President Bush and that the emergency law requires more money.
END