Bin Laden Sought U.S. Fame In TV Interview: Trial

reuters ^ | July 29, 2008 | Randall Mikkelsen

[Free ThinkerNY]

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden wanted to introduce himself to America with an ABC television interview months before al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa, the interviewer testified on Tuesday.

Former ABC correspondent John Miller, testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, also recalled comparing bin Laden with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt as he made small talk during filming of the May 28, 1998, interview at an Afghanistan mountain hideout.

It was a rare opportunity for an American journalist, and Miller detailed a movie-thriller route to get to bin Laden, complete with multiple plane flights in Pakistan, a nighttime border crossing into Afghanistan, and muzzle flashes from automatic weapons at an al Qaeda checkpoint.

"You are like the Middle East version of Teddy Roosevelt," Miller, who is now the chief FBI spokesman, told bin Laden in a selection of the interview tape screened for the trial of bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan.

Hamdan is being tried on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism for his role as bin Laden's driver -- which prosecutors say extended into serving as a bodyguard.

The significance of Miller's testimony was unclear -- he said he did not recognize Hamdan, who sat in the courtroom at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. Chief prosecutor Col. Lawrence Morris said the relevance "is clearly up to the jury to determine."

Miller said the Roosevelt remark was meant to test bin Laden's historical awareness and "keep the conversation going" as his cameraman filmed secondary footage.

[Free ThinkerNY]

John Miller:

Describe the situation when your men took down the American forces in Somalia.

Osama Bin Laden:

After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. ... As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press after the Gulf War in which it destroyed the infrastructure and the milk and dairy industry that was vital for the infants and the children and the civilians and blew up dams which were necessary for the crops people grew to feed their families. Proud of this destruction, America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order. After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers. America stopped calling itself world leader and master of the new world order, and its politicians realized that those titles were too big for them and that they were unworthy of them. I was in Sudan when this happened. I was very happy to learn of that great defeat that America suffered, so was every Muslim. ...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html

ABC reporter John Miller's interview with Osama Bin Laden, May 1998:

[ASA Vet]

[piasa]

Apparently ABC did a lot of interviews with bin Laden.