- How fortunate that of all the millions of videotapes
littering liberated Qandahar, the Americans should have chanced upon this
one! ___
-
- Thursday, December 13, 2001 Key West, Florida
-
- Supper with lawyer Sam D. who arrived during the afternoon.
Unfortunately I had a bar of Toblerone as we walked to the Bagatelle, so
the rich fish appetizer, and steak that followed did not mix well. Felt
groggy walking back. Entertaining evening with Sam, who is doing very well
financially in real estate.
-
- Afterwards from 9:55 p.m. I watched the videotape released
by the Pentagon, alleged to show Osama bin Laden in conversation with his
cronies. Mohammed Atta's father is said to have dismissed it as a fake
(without having seen it), saying he spoke to his son on the phone a few
days after the event; which would be odd, but then the widow of General
Sikorski's second pilot told me the same thing about her husband (he had
"phoned her" two or three days after the fatal crash in July
1943, she told me, but she never saw him again).
-
- The video lasted somewhat over an hour and had three
segments -- a group of Arabs said to include Osama bin Laden himself in
furtive, joyous discussion of religion, politics, and current events including
the World Trade Center attacks (the Pentagon is not mentioned: but neither
are the Jews, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or any of his other known obsessions);
an endless thirty minute tour of the Afghanistan desert, with men and children
visiting remnants of at least two helicopters -- because the camera "hosepipes"
around, panning across the desert from one wreckage site to the other --
which we assumed were American; and a return visit to the Osama discussion,
rather disconcertingly filmed seemingly at the same time as the first.
From first to last there are no women visible, though their voices can
be heard sometimes a few doors away.
-
-
- How fortunate that of all the millions of videotapes
littering liberated Qandahar, the Americans should have chanced upon this
one! But then millions of Americans play the lottery in the belief that
they can win: they have no concept of the mathematics of Large Numbers.
-
- For a while I gained the odd impression that the filming
was going on from behind a two-way mirror, as -- in best Hollywood tradition
-- nobody, at any time, looked at or seemed to notice the camera or operator.
On closer scrutiny, the camera seemed to be held at waist height throughout;
perhaps the operator was seated, but he can be heard whispering quite clearly
in the foreground -- his whispers are not translated, and much of the audible
dialogue on the screen is left untranslated, which is a great weakness.
-
- There is a brief and interesting glimpse of war booty
being unpacked and displayed, including American microwave components (presumably
radar rather than domestic kitchen variety), and a bit of a flak jacket
manufactured by a firm in Miami Lakes, Florida; the helicopter fuselage
fragments appear to be peppered with shrapnel holes. The latter items tend
to authenticate the video, as they seem to indicate equipment and even
minor personnel losses about which the Pentagon has not so far been forthcoming.
___
-
- Friday, December 14, 2001 Key West, Florida
-
- I have slept on the tape, and these are my impressions,
which are very raw and have not benefited from either knowledge of Arabic,
video or technical expertise, patriotic prejudice or academic input from
others. If somebody would pay me $200,000 I would make a perfect "expert
witness."
-
- I have to say, having watched the tape undisturbed and
alone for the full hour, that it does contains material that would without
a second's hesitation enable a judge like Charles Gray or Earl Warren to
convict Osama bin Laden of a high degree of responsibility for the WTC
atrocity. But non-conformist historians, and for that matter members of
the general public, are still entitled to a degree of skepticism. Taking
the role of avocatus diaboli, these are my own reservations, which may
very well be dispelled over the next few days by the real experts in the
relevant fields.
-
-
- The tape itself is evidently made on an amateur camera,
as it is low definition, but the tape medium used was of high standard
(there are no tracking errors or liftouts -- horizontal interference bands
-- except for the first few seconds).
-
- There is an apparently unnecessary air of secrecy surrounding
its origins, which may be calculated to enhance its plausibility.
-
- I had watched Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at
his press conference on C-Span the during previous hour and, questioned
unexpectedly about the provenance of the tape, he seemed uneasy and reluctant
to offer any detail. He said the tape had been found in private property
(a house) in Qandahar, Afghanistan, but even when pressed he refused even
to hint at how it came into US hands. An honest explanation of this would
be that a US (or for that matter British) special forces unit had obtained
it, in which case why not say so?
-
-
- We were first told, some days ago, by President George
W Bush himself, that it was the smoking gun, containing clear proof that
Osama had orchestrated the September 11 attacks. At that time it seemed
there was no intention of releasing the tape. Under media pressure, which
could have been anticipated, the government then agreed to release it,
but delayed for several days, explaining that the audio quality was poor
and the translations were indeterminate. In which case how had Bush reached
the smoking-gun conclusion? As even commentator Greenfield on CNN said,
"It seems hard to square that circle."
-
- Next, there is the translation used last night. We have
been told repeatedly over the last two days that four non-government experts
were working on a translation of the Arabic, hence the delays. The intention
was to satisfy the public that it was not biased -- Arabic being a language
notoriously vague to translate, with concepts rather than one-for-one equivalencies
often being the closest that can be attained. It has no future tense at
all, which makes conversations about planning something perhaps less distinguishable
from discussions about current events and descriptions of things that have
already happened (from internal evidence, the tape seems to have been recorded
on or about November 9).
-
- The tape finally released and broadcast last night had
a label on it throughout, identifying it as the US Pentagon translation.
So what happened to the rival version that had delayed its release?
-
- The Pentagon transcript subtitles had over-useful interpolations
in round brackets, making direct reference to the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, and civilian deaths, and in one instance identifying an Egyptian
member of this Islamic mafia referred to in conversation only as Mohammed,
as "Mohammed (Atta)" -- which might seem a bold step, given the
likely number of other Egyptians called Mohammed.
-
- As for Osama bin Laden himself, I still find it hard
to believe that this simpering, giggling mystic was able to mastermind
this ruthless plan. Maybe that is why the Pentagon was loath to put it
on show -- except that their own military leaders like Tommy Franks, Air
Force General Myers and the ineffable Rear-Admiral Stufflebeem seem to
be several plates short of a picnic in their own intellectual department,
from what we can see at their press conferences (unlike Rumsfeld whose
brain is as sharp as a Wilkinson sword). Watching the videotape I kept
asking myself -- this being Florida -- what these guys had been smoking.
Evidently in this case Islam is itself the opiate.
-
- My verdict for history on the tape will hinge on the
videotape's proper authentication, an explanation of the provenance, and
the independent translation and display (without the bottom half being
obscured by the subtitle panel) of the two key segments of the video: one
in which we are told Osama bin Laden is describing his advance calculations
of the casualties from the WTC attacks, illustrated by movements of his
hands; and the other, in which he refers to the junior participants being
kept in the dark about their imminent martyrdom. The latter is more incriminating
than the former.
-
-
- Osama 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. 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.
-
- Shaykh: Allah be praised.
-
-
- Lord Cherwell and "Bomber" Harris made much
the same kind of calculations in March 1942; I have seen them.
-
- But much rests on the integrity of the translation and
transcript. Is it pure chance that two opening phrases in this key passage
are said to be "(inaudible)"? It didn't sound inaudible in the
version I saw. Here in the United States I have heard scores of similar
discussions after the event. Suppose Osama's opening remarks were inaudibilized,
an audiotape technique that U.S. presidents have long mastered? Suppose
the missing phrases were something like, "According to CNN thousands
died in the upper floors. Well, that may be so. I'm a trained engineer
and we've done the calculations and..."
|
