Michael Rivero’s Subterfuge

1-5-02 | Republican_Strategist

[Republican_Strategist]

(CBS) Even with all the current digital wizardry, faking the videotape in which Osama bin Laden appears to take credit for the Sept. 11 attacks would be extremely difficult, experts said.

The biggest hurdle would be mimicking the cadence and rhythm of human speech. Synchronizing a doctored soundtrack with existing video would also be tough, and technology that can synthesize Arabic speech is still in its infancy.

Chi-Lin Shih, a language modeling scientist at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs, described the process as akin to reassembling a broken vase by gluing together its shards. Close scrutiny would likely reveal the cracks.

Software tools allow for elements of a person's speech to be glued together to put words in their mouths, but such a doctored recording would not sound natural to an expert listener, said Kenneth Stevens, head of the speech research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Some hardline Islamic militants in Pakistan and the Middle East suggested the tape was fabricated to provide a rationale for U.S. military actions in Afghanistan.

President Bush called the charge “preposterous.” Administration officials said they intentionally declined to try to enhance the video's sound or picture so as not to give detractors ammunition.

The videotape, which has been widely seen in the United States, was distributed Friday to Arabic media along with an Arabic transcript so “people who speak Arabic can watch it in the original language with the subtitles and the sound in Arabic,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Emerging speech synthesis technology is giving computers the ability to mimic a human voice.

The creators of AT&T's Natural Voices software, for example, claim the program can mimic the speech of actors now dead, such as John Wayne. By allowing computers to analyze enough tapes of an actor's voice, the program could synthesize the voice, allowing it to make statements Wayne never said.

be done with bin Laden's voice since recordings of his speech are readily available, said Lynn Shepherd, a vice president of Fonix Corp., a speech synthesis software company in Salt Lake City.

“If they had a lot of recordings of bin Laden, they could create some speech that sounded pretty good,” Shepherd said Friday.

However, most software requires a dozen or more hours of high-quality studio recordings, where a speaker is asked to make all of a language's particular combinations of sounds.

“It takes engineers months to break down all these voice fragments so that I can reproduce the language,” said Bill DeStefanis, who heads speech technology for ScanSoft Inc. of Peabody, Mass.

“The idea that the U.S. government could have done this in the space of a month is highly improbable,” DeStefanis said. “With a short snippet, I might be able to fake you out, but not a long speech.”

On the tape, some of bin Laden's words are unintelligible. The tape's poor sound quality could theoretically be used to mask tampering, experts said. But beyond synthesizing a voice, doctored speech would have to be synchronized video - another difficult task usually easy to spot.

Digital synchronization of sound and images is a staple of Hollywood filmmaking. In the 2000 movie “Gladiator,” actor Oliver Reed died before shooting ended and the filmmakers pieced together several scenes using previously shot footage.

DeStefanis and others said, however, that fooling the trained eye is difficult. “The human eye and ear are very good at seeing out-of-synch lips,” he said.

Also, few if any of today's sophisticated speech synthesis engines have been programmed to generate bin Laden's native Arabic, Shepherd said.

“There are some low quality ones, but nothing that would be good enough,” Shepherd said.

As for reaction to the tape, among Americans and their allies, bin Laden's satisfied and knowing musings about the Sept. 11 attacks hardened attitudes already set in stone.

In the video shown to the world, bin Laden acknowledged his advance knowledge of the suicide hijackings and spoke about how the destruction had exceeded even his "optimistic" calculations.

U.S. legal experts called the tape devastating, a "virtual confession," in the words of one.

However, newspapers in the Arab world Friday played down the bin Laden videotape. Most Friday papers were dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In Friday prayer sermons, a traditional indicator of national sentiment in the Middle East, mosque preachers did not speak of the tape. Instead, they focused on religion — the day was the last Friday sabbath in the holy month of Ramadan.

The few Arab officials and analysts who commented on the tape accepted it as damning evidence that the Saudi-born Islamist dissident was behind the attacks which killed nearly 3,300 people.

President Bush, however, said anyone questioning the tape's authenticity is reaching for a feeble excuse to support him.

"I mean, this is bin Laden unedited," Mr. Bush said Friday. "It's preposterous for anybody to think that this tape is doctored.

"That's just a feeble excuse to provide weak support for an incredibly evil man."

The president accused bin Laden of being so cold hearted that he laughed at those he sent to die, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante, and he scorned bin Laden as a coward in hiding.

"We're chasing a person obviously who is willing to send suicide bombers, on the one hand, and hide in a cave," he said. "Somebody who...encourages young people to go kill themselves, and he, himself, refuses to stand and fight."

[Republican_Strategist]

Your adolescence is rather boorish.

[Buckeroo]

But Rivero DID post some great threads designed to make you think. What is wrong with that? Aren't you free; don't you have the capability to authoritatively argue? Do you need government "official" information all the time for your support system? Or the hand-me-down liberal media from the same government source?

Give the guy a break, will ya?

[VinnyTex]

Let me get this straight. You're up here defending the hairdresser Michael Rivero who sees a conspiracy in his own shadow...

Yes-er-ie Bob. You're a real piece of work.

[Republican_Strategist]

I provided the photo from the actual video and placed right along side Rivero’s photo he claimed was from the video that proved it to be false. Again I say open your eyes. Next you’ll tell me the Holocaust was a Jewish Conspiracy and Auschwitz was a damn resort and spa.

[VinnyTex]

Rivero is a mental case. Rubber room material...

[Republican_Strategist]

Oh no…see we have Fox News: the fair & balanced network. I don’t need Rivero’s Taliban information. For example his web site depicts America’s enemy and features pictures released by the Taliban very early on showing what appears to be children that have no injuries wrapped in bandages. Its shameless propaganda. He is another Noam Chomsky.

[Buckeroo]

What make's you perfect, pal? Just because you worship Rush Limbaugh? Hmmmm ....

[ambrose]

Since when is Michael Rivero attacking FR? I haven't seen him around much lately.

[onyx]

Who is Michael Rivero? Better yet, who cares?

[Buckeroo]

So FOX NEWS is fair and balanced because they say so .... HEY!... ABCNBCCBSCNN say "THEY" are fair and balanced.

I will wager you want a government committee to determine this outcome.

[Republican_Strategist]

Every post of yours sounds like some sheepish, liberal talking to me. See I’m especially saying that because liberals like to accuse every conservative of listening to Rush Limbaugh. The fact is my schedule doesn’t allow for that. Your attack was rather insightful though.

[VinnyTex]

Look Buckshot, do you have a problem with Rush. Fine. Do I worship Rush? Nope! Do I listen to him? When I get a chance. Is Rush a paranoid lunatic? Nope! Is Rivero? Yep!

[ambrose]

He created the Clinton Body Count. Conspiracy nut, but a harmless chap... kind of like the "Lone Gunman" from the X-Files...

[Johnny Shear]

"As an old time FReeper, I regard Michael Rivero to be one of the most interesting posters to ever post to Free Republic. I always looked for his threads and valued them greatly as they always challenged me to think a bit harder and deeper about unfolding events, and to question the official truth. Consequently, I regard his banishment and the nuking of his collective contributions to Free Republic to be a tragic loss, not only to this forum, but to our nation -- a nation which needs more than ever to be challenged to question the official "truth" and THINK."

I kind of agree with you, but in a selfish way...

I like Rivero stuff in the same way I like reading about UFO's, Ghost Stories and Freaky Conspiracy Crap. (Art Bell Fan here).

It's all "Entertaining" in it's own way. But, I don't think it's "Informative" as you say...That's going a bit too far.

[Republican_Strategist]

Well obviously you have an inability to look at the proof I posted and you just hide behind abstract rhetorical lines. We need to start a forum for you guys: Rivero’s battered wives

[onyx]

Buckeroo is FR's resident drunk. He'll soon pass-out.

[onyx]

Then Michael Rivero's columns ought to be posted as "vanities" --- so should Justin Raimaldo's.

[ICU812]

As a rule; the bigger the font, the bigger the ass.

[Buckeroo]

How do you consider your points? The usual flaming? As Vinnie says about Mike being a mental case?

Oh my .. you folks have degenerated this thread.