10.00 am
WASHINGTON - The United States today released a videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the Saudi-born militant said he was the most optimistic of his colleagues about the damage that would be done to the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11 attacks.
US officials say the tape, released by the Pentagon and accompanied by an official US government translation, proves bin Laden was responsible for the attacks that killed nearly 3,300 people.
"(Inaudible) we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower," bin Laden says in the US translation.
"We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all."
The amateur videotape shows a relaxed and smiling bin Laden sitting and talking to a group of people. It was shot in November and found in Afghanistan, US officials said.
"We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day," bin Laden said.
The Bush administration has been working for days with government and private Arabic-speaking experts to translate bin Laden's comments in the amateur videotape.
Two planes struck New York's World Trade Center's twin towers. The impacts and resultant fires sent the 110-storey towers crashing to the ground. One plane smashed into the Pentagon near Washington and another crashed into a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,300 people died.
The United States within days of the attack blamed bin Laden and his al Qaeda network and launched a war on terrorism aimed at destroying them.
US intelligence officials believe bin Laden and his followers are hiding out in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan where the US military has been heavily bombing.
"The tape is a smoking gun, in itself incriminating of bin Laden," Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN's "Larry King Live" yesterday.
"But more than that it gives you a sense of the demeanour, the person of bin Laden," the Florida Democrat said. "He speaks as though he were an engineer describing a structural failure rather than a person who has just planned, orchestrated and directed one of the most horrific acts in history."
Bin Laden, who inherited millions from his family's construction fortune in Saudi Arabia, said "(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," he said according to the translation.
"It shows without a doubt, I believe, his culpability and his complicity in the whole September 11 deal. This is a damnable piece of evidence against Osama bin Laden," Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said on CNN's "Larry King Live" yesterday.
US officials say they are convinced the tape is not a fake or staged. However, its amateur quality made some segments difficult to understand.
- REUTERS
Full text of bin Laden video
Video clip: Bin Laden and advisers discuss September 11
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Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
US releases tape linking bin Laden to September 11 attack
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