NewsMax.com Wires
Thursday, Dec. 13, 2001

"We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all ... due to my experience in this field I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the areas where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we hoped for," bin Laden said.

The videotape, which the Pentagon said was found in a house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, after anti-Taliban forces took the town, shows bin Laden after what is believed to have been a business dinner in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

He said he had been notified the Thursday before the attack – Sept. 6 – that the operation was planned for the 11th.

An unidentified sheikh meeting with bin Laden said since the attack he lives "in happiness, happiness ... I have not experienced or felt in a long time."

Bin Laden said some of the terrorist attackers did not initially know they were on a suicide mission but that Mohamed Atta knew and was leading the group.

None of the pilots of the four hijacked planes knew any of the other 15 hijackers prior to the day they joined together for the attack, bin Laden told his colleagues.

"All they knew was that they had a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn't know about the operation, not even one letter," he said. "But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they were there and just before they boarded the planes.

"Those who were trained to fly did not know the others," he said.

Bin Laden said the acts of terrorism overshadowed "all other speeches made everywhere else in the world" and would be understood by Arabs, non-Arabs and "even by Chinese."

The white-turbaned sheikh expressed surprise and wonderment at the brashness of the operation.

"A plane crashing into a tall building was out of anyone's imagination," the sheikh said. "This was a great job. He was one of the pious men in the organization."

Bin Laden and the sheikh exchanged numerous stories about supposedly prophetic dreams various acquaintances had had involving airplanes, New York, Washington and plane crashes.

Bin Laden joked that he began to get nervous the operation would be compromised by the number of people who were dreaming of it without any direct knowledge.

"We were at the camp of one of the brothers' guards at Kandahar. This brother belonged to the majority of the group. He drew close and told me that he saw in a dream a tall building in America and in the same dream he saw Muhktar teaching them how to play karate," bin Laden said.

He laughs: "At that point I was worried that maybe the secret would be revealed if everyone starts seeing it in their dream. So I closed the subject. I told him if he sees another dream not to tell anybody because people will be upset with him."

An unidentified voice on the tape then recounts his own dream of two planes hitting buildings.

Bin Laden explains that he told the 50 or 60 people that listened with him to the radio as the attack unfolded to be patient after the first plane hit, because more were coming.

"I was sitting with Dr. Ahmad Abu-al [Khair]. Immediately we heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We turned the radio station to the news from Washington. The news continued and no mention of the attack until the end. ... After a little while they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it," bin Laden said.

The sheikh then says he was receiving congratulatory phone calls all day long for the attack. Americans were terrified "a coup was coming," he said.

He then hints at a future attack.

"Thank Allah America came out of its caves. We hit her the first hit and the next one will hit her with the hands of the believers. The good believers, the strong believers," the sheikh said.

The sheikh told bin Laden that the mosques in Saudi Arabia, Islam's holy land, support the attack, saying that one religious leader, Sheikh Al-Bahrani (phonetic spelling) gave a "good sermon" in his class at the exact time of the attack, suggesting that Saudi clerics were aware the attacks were coming.

Another religious leader, Sheikh Sulayman 'Ulwan, issued a fatwa on a Koran radio station saying that the victims at the Pentagon and World Trade Center were not innocent.

The sheikh also said after the attack people were lining up at mosques to become Islamic.

"People now are supporting us more; even those who did not support us in the past support us more now," the sheikh said. "Everybody praises what you did, the great action you did, which was first and foremost by the grace of Allah. This is the guidance of Allah and the blessed fruit of jihad."

The sheikh explained that he was smuggled in to the area to meet with bin Laden and expected to be brought to a cave rather than to the "clean and comfortable" guesthouse.

Bin Laden variously quotes incomplete scriptures from the Koran and poetry.

Bahrani was detained for interrogation after he signed a fatwa, or religious declaration.

At least five bearded men were at the meeting, including bin Laden, the sheikh, Ayman al Zawahiri and the unidentified cameraman. Al Zawahiri, bin Laden's personal physician and second in command, is rumored to have been wounded in a U.S. attack on Kandahar earlier this month.

President Bush was informed of the tape's existence on Nov. 29 and viewed portions of it on Nov. 30 at a morning intelligence meeting, according to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

The video begins with the end of bin Laden's remarks at a business dinner in Kandahar because the amateur photographer ran out of tape and rewound it to capture the tail end of bin Laden's remarks. Therefore, the chronological beginning of bin Laden's remarks is missing.

The transcript was put into correct chronological order, beginning with the meeting at the end of the tape and then moving forward.

According to the Pentagon, "The tape was released with an English translation and English subtitling, prepared independently by George Michael, translator, Diplomatic Language Services; and Kassem M. Wahba, Arabic language program coordinator, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. They collaborated on their translation and compared it with translations done by the U.S. government for consistency. There were no inconsistencies in the translations."

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the government conducted numerous scientific tests on the videotape comparing bin Laden's image and voice to tapes he has personally released and each test revealed the videotape to be authentic.

The translators provided both a translation and subtitles to the tape, which jumps from bin Laden to footage of an American helicopter that was downed in Ghazni province, and then al-Qaeda fighters brandishing rifles and chanting in prayer in an open field.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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Al-Qaeda
War on Terrorism

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