The linch-pin of the War on Terror has been 9/11, and the pin itself has always been Osama bin Laden. However, this pin is not made of stainless steel, but smoke and mirrors. In Part 3 we looked further into the video tapes right after 9/11 up to our first glimpse of the pivotal bin Laden Confession Tape. Now we will explore that tape further. Was it a legitimate revelation or a fraud, or even some of both?

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In Part 3 of this series, we finished by discussing the discrepancies between the video image of bin Laden in the infamous Confession Tape and other photos of bin Laden, such as the montage above. Now we are get deeper into the analysis of the tape itself, but first, if you want to get up to speed on this series, here are the links to the  previous three articles:

Part 1 (click here)

Part 2 (click here)

Part 3 (click here)

Now we are going to look more deeply at bin Laden "confessing" to a sheikh that he had perpetrated 9/11. The tape was "found" by good fortune in Jalalabad sometime in, apparently, November, 2001 and was analyzed and translated first by the Pentagon, and then be outside translators. Here is a portion of an NPR report describing this find on Dec 13, the date the Pentagon released the information:

 

JIM LEHRER: A most chilling videotape was made public today. The pentagon released a tape of Osama bin Laden discussing the successful attacks of September 11. Administration officials said it makes clear that bin Laden was the mastermind behind the operation. Ray Suarez begins our report.

RAY SUAREZ: The tape bore a label indicating it was made on November 9. Administration officials wouldn't reveal exactly how or when they got it, except to say it was found in a house in Jalalabad after anti-Taliban forces moved in. The U.S. Government translated the Arabic conversation and provided subtitles. The tape, which has a home video quality, shows bin Laden sitting on the floor in a bare room in a house in Kandahar. With him are several other men, including two aides and an unidentified cleric, or Sheikh. Bin Laden, identified on screen as UBL, made it clear he planned the September 11 attacks. (source)

Here is an NPR online synopsis of this same top story: 

Dec. 13, 2001 -- The Pentagon has released a videotape of Osama bin Laden, that it says provides additional evidence that the al Qaeda leader is responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Administration officials say the tape shows bin Laden had specific knowledge of when and where those attacks would occur before they took place.

The videotape -- discovered in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan -- shows a relaxed bin Laden discussing the attacks in Arabic with another man who appears to be a cleric. On the tape, bin Laden says he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of destruction caused at the World Trade Center; he only expected the top portion of the twin towers to collapse.

According to a translated transcript issued by the Pentagon, bin Laden says the attacks on the World Trade Center did more damage than expected. "...we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower," he says, according to the transcript. "We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) 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 area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for."

Bin Laden also indicates on the tape that he knew of the attacks in advance. "We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day," he says. "We had finished our work that day and had the radio on. It was 5:30 p.m. our time... 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. At the end of the newscast, they reported that a plane just hit the World Trade Center."  (source)

Sounds pretty much on the up and up so far, although the Pentagon's refusal to say how and when they recovered this tape should raise a red flag, and the extraordinary luck in finding one small video in a city of some 160,000 Afghans is, well, extraordinary. But hey, stranger things have happened. 

But now things start to get a little weirder. Read this NPR prologue to the fully translated transcript released by the Pentagon:

TRANSCRIPT OF USAMA BIN LADEN VIDEO TAPE

(Transcript and annotations independently prepared by George Michael, translator, Diplomatic Language Services; and Dr. 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.)

In mid-November, Usama Bin Laden spoke to a room of supporters, possibly in Qandahar, Afghanistan. These comments were video taped with the knowledge of Bin Laden and all present.

Note: The tape is approximately one hour long and contains three different segments: an original taping of a visit by some people to the site of the downed U.S. helicopter in Ghazni province (approximately 12 minutes long); and two segments documenting a courtesy visit by Bin Laden and his lieutenants to an unidentified Shaykh, who appears crippled from the waist down. The visit apparently takes place at a guesthouse in Qandahar. The sequence of the events is reversed on the tape- the end of his visit is in the beginning of the tape with the helicopter site visit in the middle and the start of the Usama bin Laden visit beginning approximately 39 minutes into the tape. The tape is transcribed below according to the proper sequence of events.

Due to the quality of the original tape, it is NOT a verbatim transcript of every word spoken during the meeting, but does convey the messages and information flow.

EDITOR'S NOTE: 39 minutes into tape (actually 37 minutes-Mac), first segment of the bin Laden meeting, begins after footage of helicopter site visit. (source)

Well, there is something strange about the video being out of sequence. Analogue tape (as in a VHS tape) cannot be edited to the point that you can relocate sections to be out of sequence with the analogue camcorder you are shooting with. I assume you would have to resplice the tape, which is an almost impossible task, since this is not 8 mm film where you can see the tiny images. To edit tape sequences, you have to convert to digital somehow.

So how is it that the middle of bin Laden's meeting begins the tape and the start of his meeting ends it, with a trek to a helicopter crash site in between? That would be like you or I recording the end of a birthday party at the beginning of the tape (with an analogue tape camcorder), going to the zoo, and then recording the party's start afterwards. You would need a time machine to do this, or a video-editing lab. Are we to assume that this safe-house had such a lab? The Pentagon, by the way, released the tape as they said they found it, out of sequence, while NPR used its high-tech equipment to digitally rectify the sequence for its online site. (see the NPR version or Pentagon version)

However, there is another explanation as to this strange out of sorts sequence, the argument that the cameraman simply started taping at the end of the footage of a crashed helicopter, ran out of tape and consequently reran the tape to the beginning and picked up taping the meeting again. That sounds like a very obvious explanation. But there is a problem with this too. Maher Osseiran has done extensive research on this tape, analyzing it frame by frame and following up on the times and places, etc., and has this to say about the crash:

..... 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. (source)

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I won't get into Ghazni and the kids yet, but Maher's rather emphatic statement that the helicopter on the tape crashed on November 2 leads to another problem. The Pentagon didn't say exactly when the tape was shot, but the tape itself bore a label of November 9, yet Maher argues that this time stamp had to have been entered wrong or, I would add, jimmied with somehow? Was the date actually really earlier? Maher does a careful analysis of this question.

First, Maher points out that the sheikh, whom he identifies as Khaled Al-Harbi, states that he was en route to bin Laden during a full moon:

In the transcript, the visiting sheikh to whom Bin Laden confessed is reported to have said: "We came from Kabul..... We asked the driver to take us, it was a night with a full moon, thanks be to Allah." On the tape itself, the sheikh actually infers prominent moon, which I interpret as 3 to 4 days before and after a full moon. He is later reported to have said: "Allah has bestowed on us...honor on us...and he will give us blessing and more victory during this holy month of Ramadan." In the tape he never uses the word Ramadan, he actually says: ".......victory during this Moubarak (meaning blessed) month and the month after." The translators decided to interpret "Moubarak month" as Ramadan since the word Moubarak is usually used to describe the month of Ramadan and totally omitted the fact that he said: "and the month after".

If Ramadan were the month the taping took place, Ramadan in 2001 starts like every other Ramadan with a new moon, as black as the night can get, and was on Nov. 16, while a full moon is not until Nov. 30, which means a prominent moon is between Nov. 26 and Dec. 4. The taping could not have happened during a prominent moon in the month of Ramadan since Kabul, the town the sheikh traveled through, had fallen on Nov. 12, Jalalabad, where it was found, on Nov.14, and Kandahar, where supposedly it was taped, was surrounded by anti-Taliban forces during that period and fell towards the end of it.

Now that we have established that the taping could not have taken place during Ramadan and that the reported date stamp of Nov. 9 on the tape could have been a programming error on the part of the camera operator, we need to go back in time and examine the previous periods of a prominent moon which are: Oct. 27 through Nov. 4, and, Sept. 28 through Oct. 6.

Going back to the transcript released by the Pentagon we find no mention of carpet bombings, coalition operations, or travel difficulties due to the military operations that officially started on Oct 6, 2001. I find it incredible that, over a period of 40 minutes of tape, there was no mention of military activities by the coalition or their effects on travel, considering the magnitude of such activities and the chattiness of the sheikh, which puts the period of Oct. 27 through Nov. 4 in doubt.

The second anchors for the timeline analysis are statements by Tony Blair, that of Nov. 14 and the following two:

On Oct 4, 2001 , in a speech, he states that a Government document is to be released and I quote the document: "There is evidence of a very specific nature relating to the guilt of Bin Laden and his associates that is too sensitive to release." The operative words are "very specific".

On Sept. 30, 2001 , in a BBC interview, Tony Blair states that he has evidence from intelligence services of Bin Laden's guilt and that the evidence was "powerful and incontrovertible". I had to look up incontrovertible in the dictionary, it means; not open to question or dispute; indisputable, as in, absolute and incontrovertible truth. This was only 4 days prior to Oct. 4, is he talking about the same "very specific" evidence. Very likely as it takes governments about 4 days to vet and publish. (see Part 3 about the mystery tape)

When we combine all three statements, we can deduce that the incontrovertible evidence was available as early as Sept. 30, that it was acquired by intelligence, and that it is a "video" since the only incontrovertible evidence, even though hearsay, Blair put forth was his quote of Nov. 14. (source)

This sounds like a rather logical deduction, so if Maher is right, that the taping was around Sept 30, then there is no way bin Laden's cameraman could have taped over the Nov 2 helicopter crash. It hadn't happened yet, and the tape released by the Pentagon would definitely have to have been edited.

There is of course, another explanation: that the whole taping of bin Laden was a staged production on Nov 9, with a script and actors, and that the script failed to take into account all the relevant events surrounding that date. And for whatever reason, they shot out of sequence. But actors? Isn't that far-fetched?

Well, there are other inconsistencies about the tape and its' circumstances. Whenever this tape was shot, bin Laden would be extremely security conscious. After all, he was just about the most wanted man on earth. Why would he then even allow anybody to tape him so randomly, without having utter control over the tape? Furthermore, bin Laden had been sending the public messages that he had had nothing to do with 9/11, and, assuming that that is really him in the video, then this would prove he is lying. So why on earth would he risk compromising his public story by allowing himself to be taped, which, apparently, is exactly what happened?

But the larger question is, is that even bin Laden? I already pointed out discrepancies between the bin Laden in the tape and a stock photo of bin Laden at the end of Part 3 in my series. Look again at the same photos at the beginning of this article. Even through all the distortions of the Confession Tape, which is of very poor audio and video quality, one can discern that the faces do not match very well at all. The website www.whatreallyhappened.com goes into great detail comparing faces and other characteristics between the Confession Tape and other videos and finds, as I did, a lousy match. (see site here).

The Confession Tape bin Laden looks heavier, with squatter, shorter nose and fatter face. As I said in Part 3, this bin Laden also looks much healthier, even jovial, than the tapes released by Aljazeera just before or right after this tape. In fact, in his December-released tape he looks haggard, sickly, and can't move his left arm. He may even be near death. It was also reported earlier in the year that he was using a cane, either because of a possible bad back or his well-known-to-be failing kidneys. But the bin Laden in the Confession Tape walks in casually and gracefully, with no hint of a limp or organ pains, and then sits comfortably and amiably as if he has no medical problems for a half hour or so. Strange, very strange for someone supposedly on regular kidney dialysis.

But if the sequence was actually shot in late September, wouldn't bin Laden have been in better shape? Likely not, because we know from this CBS News report (assuming it is accurate) that bin Laden was in less then glorious health then too:

CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.

Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.

"The military had him surrounded," says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, "and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he says, "I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after." Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11. (source)

So again, is the Confession Tape bin Laden a phony ? But wait, it gets worse. This is a quote from the Confession Tape transcript:

UBL: We were at (...inaudible...) when the event took place. We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day. We had finished our work that day and had the radio on. It was 5:30 p.m. our time. 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. At the end of the newscast, they reported that a plane just hit the World Trade Center. (source)

But when bin Laden was reported to be in a Dubai hospital in July of 2001 for kidney dialysis by the French paper Le Figaro, that paper reported he was hospitalized there for some ten days (source).

If his stay in Rawalpindi was anything like the Dubai stay, then he would not have been finishing his "work" for that day (Sept 11) and then be sitting around with this doctor (of what?) who has not yet been identified by anyone to my knowledge. If he was still in the hospital, he would be in bed, hooked up to a dialysis machine more than likely.

Another discrepancy is a sequence of bin Laden writing with his right hand while seated, not to mention continuously gesticulating with it. According to the FBI and others, bin Laden is left-handed.

In the tape bin Laden also praises two hijackers – 1) Wail M. Alshehri and 2) Salem Alhazmi. But this is also a major discrepancy. Neither of these men, it turns out, were one of the purported hijackers. Here are reports that each of these men was still alive after 9/11:

1) Wail Alshehri, a name used by one of the suspected hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11. A man by the same name is a pilot whose father is a Saudi diplomat in Bombay. "I personally talked to both father and son today," [said Gaafar Allagany, head of the Saudi Embassy's information center. (source).

The real Salem Al-Hazmi, however, is alive and indignant in Saudi Arabia, and not one of the people who perished in the American Airlines flight that crashed on the Pentagon. He works at a government-owned petroleum and chemical plant in the city of Yanbu. He said yesterday he had not left Saudi Arabia for two years, but that his passport had been stolen by a pickpocket in Cairo three years ago. (source)

At best, their identities were stolen by the real hijackers. But why would bin Laden refer to these two by their stolen identities, rather than by their real names in this casual setting, unless he didn't even know their real names? Wouldn't he want to praise his real hand-picked martyrs to his comrades. And if he didn't even know their real names, then he didn't hand-pick them, did he?

The bottom line is that the visuals and some of the statements in the Confession Video don't jive with stock photos of bin Laden and known facts. One of the statements he makes about the Twin Towers also sounds out of place for someone with a degree in engineering. He refers to the towers as being made of iron, as opposed to steel.

The bin Laden we are seeing is very possibly either one of bin Laden's rumored body-doubles or an actor. This would explain the wrong features, healthy demeanor and right-handedness, as well as some questionable statements by bin Laden. If you have seen a preview of the coming mid-December release, The Kite Runner, for example, you know how well Hollywood can recreate the Taliban and a Taliban-run house. Why can't others with adequate resources recreate similar scenes with a bin Laden entourage?

But Maher Osseiran is still of the opinion that this really was bin Laden in the video, although he believes he was actually a patsy in a much larger Black Operation by US Intelligence and their allies, and that the time and location of the taping that the Pentagon gave was false:

.....Osama bin Laden is a patsy in the sense that his terror plans where most likely hijacked by intelligence operatives and who was aided and abetted at every turn during the execution of the attacks. He may actually believe that he pulled off the sum of 9/11 with his own resources, but he did not. The plan might have originated with bin Laden, but covert intelligence operatives orchestrated the outcome and aftermath.  (source)

Furthermore, Maher believes that the taping of bin Laden was actually Part 1 of a two part sting operation by US Intelligence, and that the taping of bin Laden (or his body-double?) was anything but an amateur al Qaeda/Taliban home video, but rather a covert operation with a concealed camera, to be followed up weeks later by bin Laden's actual capture or assassination. Hence the helicopter on November 2nd, which inconveniently crashed.

So in Part 5 of this series, we will take a closer look at Maher Osseiran's sting operation theories.

Authors Bio:
I am a student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and a tempered advocate for the ultimate manifestation of peace, justice and the unity of humankind through self-realization and mutual respect, although I am not a pacifist, nor do I believe in peace at any price, which is no peace at all but only delays inevitable conflict. There are times when the world must act. Planetary consciousness is evolving, but there are many retrograde forces that would drag us back down.

I have also written one book, a combination of poetry, photography and essays entitled "Post Katrina Blues", my reflections on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans two years after Katrina struck. Go to the store at http://sanfranciscobaypress.com/ to purchase. And I also have a blog called Plutonian Mac.