A videotape in the hands of the US authorities could provide the most dramatic evidence yet of the culpability of Osama bin Laden for the events of September 11th.
The tape, found in a house search in Jalalabad, and whose existence was confirmed yesterday by the US Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, is said to show the al-Qaeda leader praising God for the far greater success than expected in the attack on the World Trade Centre, using language which indicates he was clearly involved in the planning of the attacks. He is reported to say that he had only expected the top of the buildings to collapse.
The Administration is considering whether to release it.
An official told the Washington Post that the 40-minute tape appears to have been shot by an amateur. It has been sent to outside experts for review, and they declared it "legitimate," one senior official said.
On the tape, according to the paper's sources, bin Laden said he was at a dinner when first word came that a plane had crashed into a World Trade Centre tower. Bin Laden said that he told the others at the dinner, and that they cheered. He then indicated that more is coming.
Bin Laden used his outstretched hands to explain that he expected only the top of the Trade Centre towers to collapse, down to the level where the airliners struck. The eventual total collapse of both towers, the Al-Qaeda leader said, was totally unexpected.
Last month the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, released part of the transcript of another tape, the original of which he does not have. In it bin Laden was asked by an interviewer about the New York and Washington attacks. Mr Blair said the al-Qaeda leader replied: "It is what we instigated, for a while, in self defence. And it was revenge for our people killed in Palestine and Iraq."
The Post also reports the discovery in the Farm Hada home of a former Arab bodyguard of bin Laden of handwritten notes in English on how to live undercover in the West, advising agents on such varied topics as travelling with a false passport and the proper way to apply deodorant.
The notes, written mostly in error-filled English with a few passages in Arabic, provide specific instruction in activities such as setting up a safe house, buying a plane ticket and establishing a "good cover story." General in nature, the notes do not mention any specific terrorist actions, but they do warn that Muslims "are facing a war of security" as they "target kuffar," the Arabic word for nonbelievers.
No detail appears too small to have escaped attention, down to the "normal" underwear an agent should wear and the wrist on which he should put his watch. The notes place painstaking emphasis on covering up telltale signs that an agent is an Islamic fundamentalist, advising recruits to shave their beards one week before travelling to a targeted country and engage in such forbidden practices as playing music to "show that you are not a Islamic person."
