WASHINGTON, 14 December — Osama Bin Laden said he was the most optimistic of all his colleagues about the Sept. 11 attacks but not even he dared hope they would bring down the World Trade Center towers, according to a videotape released yesterday that Washington says seals Bin Laden’s guilt.
The Pentagon released the nearly hour-long amateur videotape, accompanied by an official US translation, that US officials say incriminates Bin laden.
"(Inaudible) we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower," said Bin Laden, according to 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," recounted Bin Laden, seated on a flowered sofa discussing the attacks with a group of men, possibly in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
Bin Laden, who inherited millions from his family’s construction fortune makes reference to his own knowledge of that business.
"(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," Bin Laden said.
"This is all that we had hoped for," he said, according to the translation. Instead, the weight of the upper floors brought down the entire structures as they collapsed.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George W. Bush was first informed of the videotape’s existence on Nov. 29 and viewed it on Nov. 30 during his morning intelligence briefing. Due to the quality of the videotape, the translation by two independent Arabic speakers was not a verbatim transcript of every word spoken during the meeting, "but does convey the messages and information flow," the transcript says in a preface.
"We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day," Bin Laden said.
The day of the attacks, he said he had the radio on at about 5:30 p.m. and heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
"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.
He said that "Muhammad (Atta) from the Egyptian family" which the translation said meant Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian group, was in charge of the mission. Atta is believed to have hijacked the first plane that struck the World Trade Center. Another man sitting with Bin Laden, identified only by the religious title of sheikh, says: "A plane crashing into a tall building was out of anyone’s imagination. This was a great job."
In apparent reference to Atta, the sheikh added: "He was one of the pious men in the organization. He became a martyr."
Two planes struck New York’s World Trade Center and the fiery impact sent the giant twin 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 military campaign aimed at destroying them and their Afghan hosts, the ruling Taleban movement.
Bin Laden said the hijackers knew they were on a "martyrdom operation" but were unaware of the exact nature of the mission until just before boarding the planes.
"The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn’t know anything about the operation, not even one letter," Bin Laden said.
"But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes," he said. "Those who were trained to fly didn’t know the others. One group of people did not know the other group."
The unidentified sheikh said: "They (Americans) were terrified thinking there was a coup."
US officials say they believe the tape is not a fake or staged. Earlier, Pentagon Press officer Lt. Col. David Lapin said: "The translation was done by an agency of the US government, then it was examined by independent translators who looked at the government’s translation for consistency. The didn’t find any major inconsistencies. The videotape is grainy because it’s a home video. The Al-Jazeera interview with Bin Laden was very professional," Lapin said.
