Osama Bin Laden and September 11

[Steve Gardner]

Very interesting article in Pakistan Daily today. It compiles a fair bit about bin Laden's early alleged denials and his subsequent alleged confessions.

Nothing here is new, but it's a good one-stop-shop for those new to the subject.

Not many people know that, after September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden issued a statement on tape that he had nothing to do with the attacks on America and that such actions were against the teachings of Islam. Americans were prevented from accessing this information because we were told that Osama could possibly have an embedded "secret code" in the tape that would alert other terrorists cells to "activate" and target other American cities.

Here is the transcript of what you were not allowed to hear from Osama bin Laden's own mouth

" I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks. ... The American system is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States."

Later, another video tape miraculously appeared to validate his guilt in the attacks. The video tape, showing a man who was allegedly Osama bin Laden discussing and bragging about his role in the 9-11 attacks, was shown on American television along with Arabic-English translations of the conversations. Did you know that this tape has since been recognized as a fake? Not many news media reported this. The "Osama" in the tape is actually a known Egyptian militant who is not as tall and much too heavy to be Osama. I'll just bet you didn't know that tape was a fake! It wasn't reported on CNN.

Now we have had another audio tape allegedly from Osama. We were told that it is "proof" that he committed the 9-11 attacks. The "Osama" voice is apparently saying that the so-called 10th hijacker who was charged in American courts is actually innocent, but the real purpose of the tape is to acknowledge Osama's admission of ordering the 9-11 attacks. Well, hold on because now it appears that this tape is also fake. It's yet another Bush disinformation camapign to make people angry at Islamics and Arabs and to continue the blame game and justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a prelude to yet another miserable war in Iran.

The latest audio tape attributed to Osama bin Laden appears to be one more installment in a succession of evidence fabricated by the US government to deceive the American people, according to Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

"This tape is only the latest in a series of fabrications intended to mislead the American people," said James H. Fetzer, the society's founder. "The closer we get to revealing the truth about 9/11, the more furiously the government fights to conceal it!" He said members of Scholars and other experts had detected evidence of fakery.

In this new recording, a voice attributed to Osama bin Laden asserts that Zacarias Moussaoui was not involved in 9/11, which he knew to be the case because he had personally assigned the 19 hijackers involved in those events. The Osama of this tape thereby implicitly confesses his responsibility for orchestrating the attacks. However, in a tape released on December 27, 2001, the authenticity of which is not in doubt, Osama denied having had anything to do with 9/11. "Moreover," Fetzer added, "some of the 19 hijackers he 'personally assigned' have turned up alive and well."

To be sure, this new tape is not the first one in which bin Laden appears to take responsibility for the attacks. As David Ray Griffin, a prominent member of Scholars, points out, "The Osama on the video tape that appeared on December 13, 2001, confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks. But he is far darker and much heavier than the real Osama bin Laden. People can see the difference by looking up 'The Fake bin Laden Video Tape' on Google."

Griffin's point is supported by a work-in-progress by members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which appears on its web site under the heading, "9/11: Have we been lied to?" It offers evidence of fakery in some of the videos based upon various physical properties of the figures that are presumed to be Osama, pointing out that there are differences in the ears, cheeks, eyebrows, length of the nose and shape of the nostrils. "The use of computer analysis can 'fine tune' these questions of facial characteristics," Fetzer said, "but the gross differences already show they are not the same."

Inconsistencies

"Another problem with the video of December 13, 2001," Griffin pointed out, "was that its stocky bin Laden praised two of the alleged hijackers, Wail M. Al-Shehri and Salem al-Hazmi, by name, and yet both the London Telegraph and the Saudi embassy reported several days after 9/11 that al-Hazmi was still alive and working in Saudi Arabia. Given the fact that the earlier video in which Osama confessed was clearly a fake, we should be suspicious of this latest apparent confession."

A professor at Duke, Bruce Lawrence, who has published Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, expressed profound skepticism about a tape that was released January 17, 2006, in a report that appeared two days later. "There's nothing in this from the Koran," Lawrence said. "He's, by his own standards, a faithful Muslim who quotes scripture in defense of his actions. There's no quotation from the Koran in the excerpts we got, no reference to specific events, no reference to past atrocities." Lawrence also observed the tape ran only 10 minutes, whereas the shortest previous tape, at 18 minutes, was nearly twice as long.

Fetzer noted that many of the same anomalous properties are found in the latest tape. "Compared to Osama's past performances," he observed, "this message is too short, too direct, and full of falsehoods. It was even described on CBS News by Bob Schieffer as 'almost American'." A translation of the text of the tape has also been released by IntelCenter, a private company that does contract work for the US government. "I suppose I would be accused of being a 'conspiracy theorist' to suggest there is any connection," Fetzer added.

Authentic Voice/Fake Content

Informed that Reuters news agency has reported confirmation that the voice on the tape is indeed that of Osama bin Laden, Fetzer replied, "The fact that the voice is his does not prove that the tape is authentic. We have had phony tapes before using voices that were authentic. Mark Bingham, a passenger on Flight 93, is supposed to have called his mother and said, 'Hi, Mom, this is Mark Bingham!' His mother confirmed it was his voice, but does anyone seriously believe that Mark Bingham would have used his last name in identifying himself to his mother?"

Griffin agreed, adding, "Back in 1999, William Arkin published an article entitled, 'When Seeing and Hearing isn't Believing' (which can also be accessed on Google). Describing the new technology of 'voice morphing' (or 'voice synthesizing'), Arkin explained that, if audio technicians have a recording of your voice, then they can create a tape in which your voice‹your authentic voice!‹says anything they wish."

In a press release on April 22, 2006, the Scholars observed that a tape played at the trail of Zacarias Moussaoui included discussion among the passengers about using a drink cart to break down the cabin door alleged to have been picked up on a cockpit voice recorder, which does not record conversations in the passenger cabin. "This is not the first and certainly will not be the last time that the American government plays the American people for suckers," Fetzer said.

"We have just acquired new evidence that the Pentagon video tapes were processed and manipulated in an apparent effort to distort or conceal what happened there on 9/11," Fetzer observed. "Apparently, whenever the government feels the need to bolster the official myth about 9/11, it simply fabricates a new tape! Anybody who wants to keep score should visit our web site."

Scholars for 9/11 Truth is a non-partisan society of experts and scholars dedicated to exposing falsehoods and establishing truths about the events of 9/11. It maintains a web site at st911.org, where it archives its studies, documents, records and evidence.

Top Bin Laden Expert: The Tapes are Fakes

As a PhD in Islamic and Arabic Studies, I hate to say this, but I’ll say it anyway. The events of 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam. The war on terror itself is as phony as the latest “Bin Laden tape.” (Guardian 04)

It’s tough to admit because I know on which side my bread is buttered - and dropping Islam from the 9/11 equation is like dropping my bread butter-side-down. The myth that 9/11 had something to do with has poured millions into Arabic and Islamic studies. I finished my PhD in 2005, so all I have to do is keep my eyes in my pocket and my nose to the ground, parrot the party line, and I’ll be on the fast track to tenure.

The trouble is, it’s all based on a big lie. Take the recent “Bin Laden tape,” - please! That voice was no more Bin Laden than it was my late Aunt Corinne from Peoria. I recently helped translate a previously unknown Bin Laden tape, a real one from the early 90’s, back when he was still alive. I know the guy’s flowery religious rhetoric. The recent tape certainly wasn't him.

The top American Bin Laden expert agrees. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies Department, has just finished a book of translations of Bin Laden’s speeches. He says the recent tape is a fake and that Bin Laden has been dead for years. (ABC 2004).

Ersatz Bin Laden tapes “verified” by the CIA are nothing new. Every Bin Laden statement since 2001 has been blatantly bogus. The last we heard from the real Bin Laden were the following words recorded by Pakistani journalists: “I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation . . . I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks on the United States . . . I had no knowledge of these attacks. . .” (Wiki 2004)

Then, on December 13, 2001, as George Bush was whining about the “outrageous conspiracy theories” that were spreading like wildfire, the first and shoddiest of the “Bin Laden Speaks from the Grave” tapes appeared. The video’s sound and picture quality were horrible. It showed a big guy with a black beard, doing a passable imitation of Bin ’s voice, claiming foreknowledge, if not responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and chortling over their success. The trouble was, the big guy was clearly not Bin Laden. He was at least 40 or 50 pounds heavier and his facial features were obviously different. (911Res 2005)

The “Fatty Bin Laden tape” was widely ridiculed and I have yet to meet an informed observer who considers it authentic. (If you haven’t figured this out yet, go back and look at the images from the tape and compare them to other images of Bin Laden.) But the media let the fraud pass without asking the hard questions. Why was the US government waving this blatantly fake “confession” video in our faces?

Perhaps due to the widespread hilarity evoked by Fatty Bin Laden, the next Ousama-from-beyond-the-grave message had no images: It was an audio tape delivered to al-Jazeera in the fall of 2002. The CIA verified it as “authentic,” but ended up with egg on its face when the world’s leading voice identification experts at IDIAP in Switzerland reported that “the message was recorded by an impostor.” (Guardian 2002)

Every Bin Laden message since then has been equally phony. They are released at moments when the Bush regime needs a boost - and the American (mainstream) media go along with the fraud. Remember the bogus Bin Laden tape that made headlines right before the 2004 elections? If you didn’t figure out that it was a CIA-produced commercial for George Bush, I have some great bridges to sell you. Walter Cronkite, bless his heart, opined that Karl Rove was behind that tape. (CNN ) But the rest of the media just kept pretending that the Emperor was clothed.

And the fraud continues. Last week’s [need a date if you don’t want this article to age prematurely] Bin Laden tape has been ridiculed by America’s top Bin Laden expert, yet the US media gamely held its tattered fig leaf over the Emperor’s loins. Professor Lawrence believes that the tape was designed to distract world opinion from the horrific massacre of Pakistani civilians by an errant CIA drone. But it may have another, more sinister purpose: To prepare public opinion for another false-flag 9/11-style attack designed to trigger a US-Israel nuclear attack on Iran. (AC 2005)

As our top Bin Laden expert Professor Lawrence says, the real Bin Laden, who insisted that he had nothing to do with 9/11, has been dead since 2001. The fake messages have been fabricated by al-CIA-duh to support the Bush regime and its phony “war on terror.” It is time for Americans to rise up against the masters of synthetic terror who have been looting the US taxpayer, torching the Constitution, demolishing the economy, and threatening a nuclear Armageddon.