Bin Laden Says He Ordered 9/11 Attacks

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden, addressing the American public ahead of presidential elections, said in a video aired Friday that the United States can avoid another Sept. 11 attack if it stops threatening the security of Muslims.

Reading a statement, the al-Qaida leader refrained from threats of new attacks and instead appealed to Americans.

"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands," bin Laden said, referring to the president and his Democratic opponent. "Each state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security."

Admitting for the first time that he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden said he did so because of injustices against the Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel and the United States.

It was the first footage in more than a year of the fugitive al-Qaida leader, thought to be hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, showed bin Laden with a long gray beard, wearing traditional white robes, a turban and a golden cloak, standing behind a table with papers and in front of a plain, brown curtain.

The FBI and Justice Department had no immediate assessment of the tape. Officials said one part of their analysis will be to discern whether there may be hidden messages or clues about a possible future attack against the United States. But they said it was too early to know that yet.

There was no way to determine when the tape was made _ but it offered evidence that bin Laden was alive and actively following events. Sen. John Kerry emerged as the Democratic candidate in the spring.

Bin Laden said he wanted to explain why he ordered the suicide airline hijackings that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon so Americans would know how to avoid "another disaster."

"To the U.S. people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another disaster," he said. "I tell you: security is an important element of human life and free people do not give up their security."

He accused President Bush of misleading Americans by saying the attack was carried out because al-Qaida "hates freedom." Bin Laden said his followers have left alone countries that do not threaten Muslims.

"We fought you because we are free .... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," he said.

He said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital.

"While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women," he said.

"God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind," he said.

Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book.

"It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

"It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.

In planning the attacks, bin Laden said he told Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, that the strikes had to be carried out "within 20 minutes before Bush and his administration noticed."

The image of bin Laden reading a statement was dramatically different from the few other videos of the al-Qaida leader that have emerged since the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the last videotape, issued Sept. 10, 2003, bin Laden is seen walking through rocky terrain with his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, both carrying automatic rifles. In a taped message issued at the same time, bin Laden praises the "great damage to the enemy" on Sept. 11 and mentions five hijackers by name.

In December 2001, the Pentagon released a videotape in which bin Laden is shown at a dinner with associates in Afghanistan on Nov. 9, 2001, saying the destruction of the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded even his "optimistic" calculations.

But in none of his previous messages, audio or video, did bin Laden directly state that he ordered the attacks.

U.S. authorities have long said they believe bin Laden is hiding in a rugged, mountainous tribal region of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan, but there has been no firm evidence of his whereabouts for three years.

The last audiotape purportedly from bin Laden came in April. The speaker on the tape, which CIA analysts said likely was the al-Qaida leader, offered a truce to European nations if they pull troops out of Muslim countries. The tape referred to the March 22 assassination by Israel of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

Al-Zawahri, bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, has spoken on three recent audiotapes that emerged on June 11, Sept. 9 and Oct. 1 this year. In the latest, he called on young Muslims to strike the United States and its allies.

Bin Laden Threatens More Attacks Like Sept. 11

Fri Oct 29, 2004 04:32 PM ET

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said in a video tape aired on Saturday that the United States could face renewed attacks because the reasons for mounting the Sept. 11 strikes still existed. In his clearest comments yet taking responsibility for the attacks three years ago, he said just days before President Bush faces re-election: "Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened."

He said he thought of the idea of attacking the U.S. skyscrapers when he saw Israeli aircraft bombing tower blocks in Lebanon in 1982.

Bush Says U.S. Won't Be Intimidated by Bin Laden

Fri Oct 29, 2004 06:04 PM ET

TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) - President Bush vowed on Friday that "Americans will not be intimidated or influenced" by a threatening videotape from Osama bin Laden.

Kerry Says Will Stop at Nothing to Catch Bin Laden

Fri Oct 29, 2004 05:54 PM ET

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential contender Sen. John Kerry on Friday vowed to "stop at nothing" to hunt down Osama bin Laden after the al Qaeda leader released a videotape commenting on the U.S. election.

"In response to this tape of Osama bin Laden, let me make it clear, crystal clear, as Americans we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists," Kerry told reporters on a campaign stop in the hotly contested state of Florida.

"They are barbarians and I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down and capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes. Period."

Analysis: Does Bin Laden prefer Bush or Kerry?

Lisa Hoffman, Scripps Howard News Service

October 30, 2004 OSAMAVOTES1030

The release of a new videotape Friday in which Osama bin Laden obliquely weighs in on the looming American presidential election puts the spotlight on a question analysts have weighed for months:

Who would the terror chief prefer to be president - George Bush or John Kerry?

Though the authenticity of the bin Laden tape has not yet been conclusively determined by U.S. intelligence, it sounded and looked legitimate and the White House said it appeared to be recently made by bin Laden.

The timing of the release of the tape to the Arabic TV network al Jazeera - four days before the Nov. 2 election - lent credence to the theory that bin Laden is attempting to influence the vote, either by the message or the implied threat it contained that America faces more attacks if it does not change its policies.

Though the videotape implies that it is unimportant who wins the White House, its message is a clear slam at Bush and his administration. The Kerry campaign, attempting to distance itself from any such unwelcome support, fired out statements soon after the tape aired.

``As Americans, we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists,'' Kerry said. ``They're barbarians and I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes, period.''

Richard Holbrooke, a foreign policy adviser to Kerry, said that if bin Laden is trying to affect the election, ``he's making a huge mistake.''

``It's an outrageous attempt to intimidate everyone,'' Holbrooke told CNN.

President Bush sounded the same message. ``Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by enemies of our country,'' he said.

Some experts on terrorism say it could be a mistake to interpret bin Laden's criticism as an implicit endorsement of Kerry. There are as many reasons for bin Laden to hope Bush is re-elected as there are for the terror kingpin to root for Kerry, they say.

In fact, critics of the war in Iraq and other U.S. foreign policies say, the Bush tenure has actually been a boon for bin Laden.

Those bent on global Islamic holy war see the U.S. president as the personification of arrogance and imperialism - a tailor-made poster boy for recruiting jihadis across the globe. Just because they vilify him doesn't mean they want him evicted from the White House.

``If you ask them if they are better off now than they were four years ago, (Islamic extremists) would say the past four years have been very good,'' said Joseph Cirincione, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. ``There isn't an Islamic fundamentalist alive who wouldn't say (Bush) has been big for business.''

Husain Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the same think tank who monitors Islamic extremist and Middle East publications, says Bush's ``us versus them'' philosophy on fighting terrorism has energized his Islamic enemies, as has the Iraq war, which extremists have cast as the unfolding of certain Koranic prophecies by the invasion of the ``American Mongols.''

``From their point of view, the more proliferation the better,'' Haqqani said.

Perhaps worried that Bush was in danger of losing the election, bin Laden may have wagered that a message from him blasting Bush would cause Americans to rally around their current leader - and thus ensure Bush would remain a foil for international terrorists.

Still, Haqqanit and other analysts can also make the case that bin Laden and his ilk would welcome a Kerry win. For instance, the terrorists could take credit for helping to oust a U.S. president, much as they changed the course of Spanish politics with their deadly train bombings there in March.

Though Kerry professes an unequivocal commitment to battle terror, there may be a perception in al Qaeda's ranks that the Massachusetts senator would wage a softer war, given his criticisms of parts of the anti-terror Patriot Act and his promise to put more emphasis on diplomatic methods of countering terrorism. Kerry also has said he would put more emphasis on domestic U.S. problems than Bush has.

Successes by the Bush administration and other nations in cutting off terror financing and the arrest of thousands of suspected terrorists also have proved bad for bin Laden's business, these analysts say.

``Some might think, 'Kerry is going to be less tough so we can do more','' said Lorenzo Vidino, analyst at the Investigative Project, a counter-terrorism research center in Washington.

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