| August
21 , 2006
How Osama was Really Taped Boasting
of the 9/11 Attacks; Why
the Release of the Tape was as Good as a De Facto Pardon
Osama's Confession;
Osama's Reprieve
By MAHER
OSSEIRAN
On
September 21, 2001, ten days after 9/11 a sting operation against
Osama Bin Laden was launched. It was to be a two-part affair.
Part
1 was the taping of Bin Laden describing the 9/11 attack.
Part
2 was to be his capture or elimination.
On
September 26, 2001, ten days prior to military operations in Afghanistan,
Part 1 was successfully conducted and we have seen the result; the
Bin Laden confessional tape. Part 2 failed due to bad weather on
November 2, 2001.
For
Part 1, intelligence had about 4 days advance notice of the meeting
where the taping took place; about 24 hours advanced notice of its
location, and knew that Bin Laden was going to be there for more
than 3 hours.
The capture was deferred to Part 2. A person from the sting team
was left behind - the sting team was a minimum of 3 - to alert Special
Forces of Bin Laden's return to the village where his family and
favorite son Hamza were living.
The operation failed because of a simple case of freezing rain.
The release of the tape on December 13, 2001, was the result of
world pressure for proof, especially from Muslim countries; the
release was 3 days before the end of Ramadan.
The first mention of a sting operation in the press was in a UPI
report, August 17, 2001 from Pakistan:
“The
U.S. government has requested Pakistan to provide active support
for an operation inside Afghanistan to catch terrorism-suspect
Osama Bin Laden, a report said Friday. The United States has also
discussed with Pakistani officials the possibility of "using
U.S. special forces" for a sting operation inside Afghanistan,
The News newspaper reported.”
The
same UPI report stated that Pakistani authorities dissuaded the
U.S. from proceeding for political reasons that were internal to
Afghanistan.
Since
this report predated 9/11, the primary objective of any sting at
the time had to be the capture or elimination of Bin Laden and not
the taping of a confession to a crime that had not taken place.
A more direct mention in the press that the taping of Bin Laden
was the result of a sting operation came three days after the tape
aired. In the London Observer, on December 16, Ed Vulliamy and Jason
Burke reported:
"This
weekend, as the debate the tape has provoked continued across
the Islamic world, several intelligence sources have suggested
to The Observer that the tape, although absolutely genuine, is
the result of a sophisticated sting operation run by the CIA through
a second intelligence service, possibly Saudi or Pakistani.”
The
Pentagon tells us that the taping took place on November 9 but the
facts dispute it. To determine the exact date, statements by Saudi
authorities and the sheikh in the tape, all available to the Pentagon,
were used:
.
Saudi authorities said that the visiting sheikh, Khaled Al-Harbi,
to whom Bin Laden confessed, left Saudi Arabia on September 21,
2001.
.
On the tape, Al-Harbi gives us five instances that corroborate
the official Saudi date of September 21, and two of those instances
indicate that he left in a hurry as soon as travel arrangements
to Afghanistan were complete.
.
On the tape, Al-Harbi also tells us how he reached Afghanistan:
“naturally, we were smuggled through Iran.”
To what seems a genuine departure date given by Saudi authorities
of September 21, an additional 2 to 3 days of travel time are needed
to cross Iran and reach the Afghan border and one more day for the
sting team, determined from the tape to be at least 3, to reach
the guesthouse. The arrival of the visiting sheikh and his team
to the guesthouse was around September 25, 2001. The sheikh tells
us that he arrived the day prior to the meeting, which makes the
taping date most likely September 26, 2001.
The
scenario of a successful sting takes a good period of time to research,
develop, and rehearse. The departure date of the sheikh, September
21, 2001, barely ten days after 9/11, does not provide sufficient
time to conjure a sting from scratch but is sufficient to alter
the primary goal to taping Bin Laden and devise the two-part sting.
The determination of the exact date gives the UPI report higher
credibility. Surely the sting scenario had to have been developed
prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and its original
goal had to be the capture or elimination of Bin Laden.
The
Pentagon’s chosen date of November 9 can only be described
as a convenient fabrication and an attempt to mislead. Properly
examined and analyzed, th tape in fact reveals more contradictions
that further corroborate The Observer and UPI sting reports. The
large body of evidence unveiled by analysis indicates that it should.
Helping with this analysis is a videographer with 25 years experience
in cinematography, video, and multi-media production, and, Ali Al-Ahmed,
the human rights activist who supplied the more revealing and accurate
translation of this Bin Laden tape to ABC News.
Other
than supplying the Arabic transcript of the tape, Mr. Al-Ahmed’s
contribution has allowed for a better understanding of Bin Laden’s
inner circle and to formulate an accurate timeline. Most importantly
though, his contribution helped identify a key person featured prominently
in the tape. His name is Mukhtar, a trusted associate of Bin Laden
who ran his sensitive errands and who was trusted enough to double
as a surrogate father, the mentor, of his children.
From
various official US government statements we are supposed to believe
the tape was found in a private home in Jalalabad, and that, due
to its poor quality, composition, and mishmash of topics (confession,
village, indoor and outdoor helicopter wreckage, and chanting),
it was the work of an unknown amateur videographer who started taping
Bin Laden three quarters of the way into a tape, ran out of tape,
rewound it within the camera, and, finished taping Bin Laden over
earlier footage of a downed American helicopter.
Since
we have already made the case for the taping having taken place
on September 26, 2001, we can now address the location. The Pentagon
would like us to believe it was Kandahar. Again, the facts dispute
the official version. There is no indication on the tape that the
taping took place in Kandahar, not even a hint but ample evidence
that it is not.
Again,
Al-Harbi, the visiting sheikh, tells us that he was smuggled through
Iran and that he passed through Kabul on his way to the meeting.
If we examine the road map of Afghanistan, we realize that wherever
the Iranian border is crossed, from the extreme north to the extreme
south, there is a more direct, shorter, and safer way to Kandahar
that does not go through Kabul. Kandahar is not likely to be the
final destination, however, is there more information on the tape
that tells us where the taping took place? Helping in determining
the location of the taping were the cameo appearances of Bin Laden’s
kids throughout the tape, including the portion that featured the
visiting sheikh, i.e. the confession. Like any other kids, Bin Laden’s
kids were always in the way, and their constant motion and curiosity
seems to inevitably place them in front of a camera as it is taping.
Their
cameo appearances on almost every segment of the tape, including
that of the visiting sheikh, combined with a statement in the helicopter
segment by their mentor, Mukhtar, identifying his residence, would
lead us to deduce that the taping location is in the vicinity of
where the kids lived.
Also,
both the Bin Laden tape and an Al-Jazeerah tape show the kids handling
the wreckage of the Special Forces helicopter that went down in
bad weather on November 2, 2001, less than half a mile from a small
village in Ghazni province; a fact not disputed by the Pentagon.
In brief, the taping of Bin Laden took place in a small village
in Ghazni province, where the Bin Laden kids and their mentor lived,
and where a Special Forces helicopter crashed, in contradiction
with the official location of Kandahar.
The
technical analysis of the tape exposes many anomalies.
The
video expert who examined the tape tells us the following:
.
At least two cameras were used to produce the tape footage.
.
One camera was exclusively used to tape the Bin Laden segment
and that footage bears only the effects of transfer from the European
video standard to the American video standard.
.
At least one other camera was used to produce the other segments
that included footage of the helicopter crash site, village, and
wreckage. Only this footage bares anomalies that are textbook
descriptions of artifacts caused by poor electronic transmission
through either a phone line or satellite and are not the result
of a camera malfunction.
Any video authenticator, including the Pentagon’s, should
have made these observations and reached the two camera conclusion.
The biggest question the analysis raises is, why would only certain
parts of the tape and not all bear electronic transmission artifacts
and why would such transmitted footage make its way back into the
camera?
Government
officials never addressed the issue of technical analysis. Their
explanation dealing with the poor quality of the tape was purely
anecdotal. They attributed the poor quality to an amateur videographer
who ran out of tape while taping Bin Laden, rewound the tape, and
recorded the rest of the Bin Laden visit over earlier footage of
a US Special Forces helicopter that crashed in bad weather on November
2. The identity of the amateur videographer, was easy to determine.
His
name is Mukhtar, a young associate of Bin Laden who was trusted
to run his sensitive errands, and as described previously, trusted
enough to also double as the mentor of his young boys and lives
in that same village in Ghazni.
Mukhtar
has a very distinctive taping style; as if documenting the daily
life of his charges, the Bin Laden kids, he always narrates while
he is taping and the kids appear prominently in those segments he
taped. He is only responsible for some of the helicopter footage.
Another person, whose style can be describe as that of a voyeur,
is responsible for the rest of the helicopter footage since Mukhtar
was a subject in that footage, and, most importantly, the Bin Laden
footage, where Mukhtar was again a subject in that footage.
Exposure
of the existence of another person responsible for the Bin Laden
footage unravels the official explanation. A single amateur videographer
can no longer take the blame, as the Pentagon would like us to do,
and poses some serious questions relating to the issue of rewinding
the tape and the electronic transmission of a portion of it. Since
Mukhtar lived the village where the taping took place, it is ludicrous
to accept that he transmitted his own footage to himself electronically
and re-introduced it into his camera.
Based
on the context of the visit where Bin Laden was comfortable enough
to address the issue of 9/11, have dinner, and recite poetry, such
a visit should have lasted between 3 and 4 hours. The rewinding
of the tape would have consumed 5 minutes at the most. The question
is, how come we only have 35 minutes of that visit on tape, and,
whatever happened to the other 2 to 3 hours? Also, if Bin Laden
was actually taped on September 26, we can easily say that neither
the amateur videographer, Mukhtar, nor any other person for that
matter, could have traveled back in time and placed the Bin Laden
footage over the helicopter footage that was taped after November
2.
The
electronic transmission and the chronology of the tape can only
be explained as the result of an editing process that took place
outside the camera and after November 2. Also, the only plausible
explanation that can consolidate all the findings above is that
the Bin Laden footage left Afghanistan shortly after it was taped.
The rest of the footage was collected by U.S. Forces from Mukhtar’s
residence and the voyeur cameraman after the fall of the village,
around Nov. 14-15, and was transmitted electronically to the same
final destination, where the editing took place.
Now
that we understand Mukhtar’s limited contribution to the tape,
let us examine that of the other individual described as the voyeur
cameraman. Our technical examination of the tape was fairly extensive.
It included viewing a large portion of it frame by frame which revealed
eight consecutive frames, barely a quarter of a second of play time,
that would go unnoticed under normal viewing. The voyeur cameraman,
caught off guard by the unexpected arrival of Bin Laden, rushed
to put his turban on. He inadvertently filmed himself and gave us
eight frames that are close up shots of him in the act of putting
on his turban.
Wrapping
a turban around the head requires the use of two hands, how did
this voyeur cameraman sprout the third hand that held the camera?
These eight frames can only reinforce The Observer report that the
camera was covert and part of a sting operation. Other facts supporting
a concealed camera are: the total lack of eye contact with the camera,
not a single instance; also many instances where the camera was
blocked; the absence of any bloopers in the Bin Laden footage running
35 minutes.
A
covert camera might also explain why we only have 35 minutes out
of what is a 3 to 4 hour visit. If the camera were worn, the person
wearing it would have had to eat while the others ate, pass a plate,
and would have had to occasionally engage in conversation or possibly
go to the bathroom.
We
only got the footage that incriminated Bin Laden. All other footage
that would have easily exposed the taping as a covert operation,
as compared to the hard to find eight frames, was edited out. The
identity of this voyeur cameraman is unknown, but his taping style,
which included the Bin Laden footage, and footage of the village
and the downed U.S. Special Forces helicopter, places him at the
village from September 26 to November 3-4.
Why?
Did
the visiting sheikh, as a contribution to the jihad effort, leave
the voyeur cameraman behind, or did he simply volunteer to stay?
Was he a Saudi intelligence operative with a role similar to the
operative whose task was to pinpoint Al-Zawahiri for the recent
Predator strike in Pakistan? Was he to stay behind and signal when
Bin Laden would return to visit his kids and family? Was he responsible
for the return of the Special Forces helicopter to that village?
The
connection between this voyeur cameraman and the two events of taping
Bin Laden and the return of the Special Forces to a small village
of barely 100 houses in a country as large as Texas seemed to be
too much of a coincidence.
Just
to be thorough, I contacted a mathematics professor to find out
if a value can be assigned to such a coincidence. The professor
put the probability of the two events occurring simultaneously at
5 in 1000 and much lower on a day with freezing rain, the weather
condition on November 2, 2001, the day the Special Forces helicopter
crashed.
The
return of Bin Laden on Nov. 2, five weeks after the taping, would
make such a visit a rare occasion, and, due to the deteriorating
security conditions, an event that might not repeat itself. Could
it be that, faced with such a prospect, the controllers of the operation
recklessly dismissed the dangers of the freezing rain and ordered
the Special Forces back to the village on November 2, 2001, where
they crashed and suffered casualties?
The
optimum setting to capture Bin Laden on September 26, the date of
the taping, when the controllers of the operation had 3 to 4 days
advance notice of the meeting, 12 to 24 hours advance notice of
its location and where Bin Laden was to spend at least 4 hours,
was squandered and Bin Laden’s capture was deferred to a future
visit to his family in that village.
The
primary objective of a two-part sting was to tape Bin Laden confessing
to his involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the second part of the sting
was to capture him.
Once
this two-part scheme started unraveling, these misplaced priorities
left the commander in chief with the fruits of the better-scripted
first part: Bin Laden boasting tape at a dinner meeting to a paraplegic
visitor named Khaled al-Harbi.
The
second part whose objective was his capture failed due to a simple
case of bad weather.
Some
might see the half full part of the glass and say that the administration,
even though it squandered the better scripted part of the sting
in preference for taping, tried its best and failed; after all,
no one can control the weather.
Such
an argument has merit if it were not for the release of the tape
on December 13, 2001.
As
a highly sensitive byproduct of a failed intelligence operation,
once released, it revealed to Bin Laden how close intelligence services
were to him (capturing him) and exposed the possibility that the
entire taping location was under their control.
By
releasing the tape, the Bush administration did not just grant Bin
Laden a reprieve but a presidential pardon one would ever get that
close to him again.
Maher
Osseiran is an Arab-American, peace activist, and a member
of Al-Awda, an organization advocating the right of return of the
Palestinians to their ancestral land. He can be reached at maher@mydemocracy.net
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copyright
2006 Maher Osseiran
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