WASHINGTON, 16 December — The release of the Bin Laden tape seems to have provided more speculation than answers. Yesterday, the Pentagon officer who received, and worked on the translations and release of the Bin Laden video, spoke to Arab News.
He said he could not divulge how the tape was obtained because the information “is sensitive,” and explained why it was the Pentagon that released the tapes, the timing of the release, the authenticity of the tape, and the use of the tape to show “what we knew by other means.”
“The decision was made earlier this week that the tapes would be released by the Defense Department. We suspect the tape was made in early November,” said Lt. Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon Public Affairs officer who had a lead role in the video’s public release.
Lapan said the tape came into the possession of US government in late November, and “on Monday of this week the decision was made that the Department of Defense would release the tape, and do the English sub-titling and captioning of it.”
The translation was made by “one of the US agencies,” said Lapan, “but we were asked to do an independent translation of what was on the video. So the translators we bought in looked at a copy of the translation the government had done, which they used as a starting point, they then watched the tape and we asked them to verify the accuracy and change any inconsistencies they found.”
“They found things in the translations, but no inconsistencies. So the translation resulted in a more robust translation in what we had initially,” said Lapan.
“Our intent was to have some independent translations, ones that were not connected with the US government. They were to look at it and translate it, and because we were making an effort to get it out quickly, we used the first translations as a starting point. They added to the translation, but sometimes they still used “inaudible” rather than guessing at what was there.”
Lapan said he does not know why the Pentagon was chosen to distribute the tape. “It was an internal discussion between White House, State Department and Defense Department. We had all the government agencies involved in this, and it was decided that the Department of Defense would be the one to handle it.”
The decision was deliberately made not to provide an Arabic transcript, said Lapan, “because we thought we would provide a copy, untouched, of the original tape — and Arabic speaking people and news outlets could provide their own translations, and not depend on us.”
Asked about the specifics of the video, Lapan said: “The tape came into our possession in late November. There is an electronic notation, a date stamp, that says 9/11/01. We don’t know for a fact that is the day that it was made, but that’s what we think, also because of specific references in the tape (of events that happened at that time).
“We have not divulged how we obtained it, because it’s sensitive,” said Lapan.
Regarding his specific role with the video, Lt. Col. Lapan joked: “I watched it so many times that my understanding of Arabic got much better. I don’t speak Arabic, but started to be able to pick out certain phrases.
“My role was getting the translators, telling them the task, helping them through the process by getting them whatever they needed. And I physically assisted by putting the captioning on the video, so I put the text up to be as close as possible as to the words when spoken.”
Reactions to the “credibility” of the video was an issue the Pentagon knew they couldn’t control, said Lapan. “People would have to decide on their own, and we didn’t expect everyone would embrace it. For those whose support Bin Laden, we knew there was little we could do to change their mind. But we wanted people to view it on their own and come to their own conclusions.”
