Message #216704

[Mikolon]

36 This would be true, at least, until the appearance of the “October Surprise” video of 2004. But it also, I argued in my book, shows multiple signs of being a fabrication. 

37 OBLDA 23.

38 Osseiran even claims that I had “stated that believed in [his] work to the point [of trying] to include it in ‘Debunking 9/11 Debunking’ and apologized by email for [my] failure to do so.” However, the email statement from me that he quoted to support this claim merely said: “after I read Ed’s essay and your latest version, I checked to see if I could modify my account of this video in my book somewhat but it was too late.
” Although Osseiran infers from that statement that I was “not only very familiar with the work but also a believer,” my statement does not say that but merely that I would modify my discussion of the video. If I recall correctly now, I found his hypothesis interesting enough to write about, especially in light of Ed Haas’s essay of March 7, 2007, entitled “Taking the Fat Out of the Fat Bin Laden Confession Video” (http://web.archive.org/web/20070918060054/muckrakerreport.com/id372.html), which argued that distortions caused during the production of the tape could account for the fact that its bin Laden figure appeared too fat to be the real bin Laden. Adding a treatment of the Osseiran-Haas hypothesis would have been a significant modification of my discussion of this video, but it would not have entailed an endorsement of that hypothesis.

39 Maher Osseiran, “Is bin Laden Responsible for the 9/11 attacks?” July 26, 2007 (http://www.mydemocracy.net/war_crimes/bin_laden_911_responsible.htm); “Osama’s Confession; Osama’s Reprieve,” Counterpunch, August 21, 2006 (http://www.counterpunch.org/osseiran08212006.html).

40 Osseiran, “Osama’s Confession; Osama’s Reprieve”; “Is bin Laden Responsible for the 9/11 attacks?”

41 Osseiran, “Osama’s Confession; Osama’s Reprieve”; “Is It High Treason or Just a Simple Case of Dereliction of Duty?” January 11, 2007 (http://www.mydemocracy.net/war_crimes/treason_dereliction_duty.htm). 

42 Maher Osseiran, “Bin Laden’s Confession; Is That What It Is?” March 15, 2007. At one time, this paper was posted at Muckraker Report (http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id375.html) ; available at 911 Blogger (http://www.911blogger.com/node/6954).

43 Toby Harnden, “US Casts Doubt on Bin Laden’s Latest Message,” Telegraph, December 27, 2001 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/1366508/US-casts-doubt-on-bin-Laden%27s-latest-message.html).

44 “Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Bin Laden Would Need Help if on Dialysis,” CNN, January 21, 2002 (http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/01/21/gupta.otsc/index.html). For the tape, see “”Osama Bin Laden Tape Dezember [sic] 2001” (http://www.myvideo.de/watch/3760193/Osama_Bin_Laden_Tape_Dezember_2001). 

45 Ed Haas, “Taking the Fat Out of the Fat Bin Laden Confession Video,” March 7, 2007 (see note 38, above).

46 I had suggested looking at “Osama bin Laden Gets a Nose Job” (http://www.awitness.org/news/december_2001/osama_nose_job.html).   

47 These differences are emphasized in a one-minute clip entitled “The Bin Laden Confession Tape” ().

48 “Most Wanted Terrorists: Usama bin Laden,” Federal Bureau of Investigation (http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm).

49 Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World (New York: St. Martin’s, 2009), 159-60.

50 John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, updated with a new preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 258.

51 Ibid., 58.

52 Ibid., 54. 

53 John R. MacArthur, “How Kuwait Duped The Times’

Bestseller List,” New York Observer, March 11, 1996.

54 MacArthur, Second Front, 258. 

55 “Foreign Government Financed Propaganda into Best Seller,” National Public Radio, March 30, 1996.

56 Lawrence Van Gelder, “Plagiarism Suit on Parallel Tales of Arab Wives,” New York Times, January 10, 1995 (http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/10/nyregion/plagiarism-suit-on-parallel-tales-of-arab-wives.html).

57 Richard H. Curtiss, “’Princess’ Plagiarism Suit Provides Rare Look into Literary Arab-Bashing,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 1996: 82, 111-12 (http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/1096/9610082.htm). 

58 Monika al-Amahani, Cinderella in Arabia: A Cross-Cultural Autobiography (iUniverse, 2001). 

59 Gillian Whitlock, Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 91.

60 Ibid., 113-14, 213n8. Besides providing a blurb for Khouri’s book, Sasson also wrote a brief review of it on Amazon.com in which she called it a “true story” and added: “I recommend this book with as much enthusiasm as I can possibly muster” (http://www.amazon.ca/product-reviews/0743448790?pageNumber=11). The review that exposed Norma Khouri’s book as a fraud showed that anyone who knew much about Jordan would have quickly seen its fraudulent nature; see Malcolm Knox, “The Lies Stripped Bare,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 24, 2004 (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/23/1090464851887.html?oneclick=true). 

61 David Brown, “Briton Marries Bin Laden’s Son,” London Times, July 11, 2007 (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2056380.ece).

62 David Brown, “Osama Bin Laden’s Son Omar Ossama Is Banned from Britain,” London Times, April 30, 2008 (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3842353.ece).

63 Growing Up Bin Laden, 287.

64 Ibid., 289. 

65 Brown, “Briton Marries Bin Laden’s Son.”

66 Brown, “Osama Bin Laden’s Son Omar Ossama Is Banned from Britain.”

67 “Bin Laden Son Aims to be ‘Ambassador of Peace,’” Associated Press, January 21, 2008 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22711392).

68 Nick Watt, “Bin Laden's Son Wants to Make Up for Father's 'Mistake,’” ABC News, January 21, 2008 (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4168151).

69 Ibid.

70 Tom Leonard, “Osama bin Laden's Son Asks 'Find Another Way,'” Telegraph, April 12, 2008 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1576262/Osama-bin-Ladens-son-asks-find-another-way.html). 

71 Andrew Lee Butters, “Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Son Speaks,” Time, October 27, 2009 (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932318,00.html).

72 Thomas W. Lippman, “My Father, the Terrorist,” Washington Post, November 15, 2009 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111301386.html).

73 Simon Allison, “Osama bin Laden, My Father,” Asia Times Online, December 24, 2009 (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KL24Ak01.html).

74 Growing Up Bin Laden, 41, 127, 140, 163, 165, 178, 199, 200, 221, 239, 242, 275, 287. 

75 Ibid., 287.

76 Ibid., 199, 237, 248, 287. 

77 Watt, “Bin Laden's Son Wants to Make Up for Father's 'Mistake.’”

78 Growing Up Bin Laden, 285. 

79 Butters, “Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Son Speaks”; Charlotte Kemp, “My Bizarre and Terrifying Childhood with My Father, Osama bin Laden,” Daily Mail, October 28, 2009 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1223409/My-bizarre-terrifying-childhood-father-Osama-bin-Laden.html); Thomas Hochwarter, “Bin Laden Will Never Be Found, Son Claims,” Austrian Times, December 15, 2009 (http://austriantimes.at/news/General_News/2009-12-15/18872/Bin_Laden_will_never_be_found,_son_claims).

80 Hochwarter, “Bin Laden Will Never Be Found, Son Claims”; Watt, “Bin Laden's Son Wants to Make Up for Father's 'Mistake.’”

81 Growing Up Bin Laden, 172.

82 Guy Lawson, “Osama's Prodigal Son,” Rolling Stone, January 20, 2010 (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/;kw=[3351,103658];jsessionid=465B03872F009E8F44198245A66FC4C5).

83 Growing Up Bin Laden, 263. 

84 Lawson, “Osama's Prodigal Son.”

85 See Lara Setrakian, “Osama Bin Laden’s Teen Daughter Allowed to Leave Iran,” ABC News, March 22, 2010 (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/International/iran-releases-osama-bin-ladens-teenage-daughter/story?id=10169432). 

86 “Transcript of Usama bin Laden Video Tape,” Department of Defense, December 13, 2001 (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2001/d20011213ubl.pdf).

87 For the government documentation of these ticket purchases, see the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons, “August 25-September 5, 2001: Hijackers Spend Over $30,000 on 9/11 Tickets” (http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a082401buyingtickets&scale=0). 

88 "Bin Laden 'Voice' Lists Hijackers," BBC, September 10, 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2249984.stm).

89 In “Bin Laden’s Confession; Is That What It Is?” Osseiran wrote: “The magnitude of 9/11 was not achieved by Osama bin Laden alone. He might have been the originator of the plan. He might have put his plan in motion. But the reason 9/11 unfolded is because it was allowed to unfold by elements of the global intelligence community and other segments of the U.S. government. That is to say that Osama bin Laden was enabled and his plan exploited by the very people that could have stopped it. Instead of preventing 9/11 once they learned of it, people like Dick Cheney decided to make it worse – to create their desired New Pearl Harbor to further facilitate their lust for a New World Order. One could argue that the first hijacking related to 9/11 occurred when the bin Laden plan was hijacked by those that could make WTC7 collapse – a building that bin Laden was not targeting.”

90 These points were made in the testimonies of Cofer Black, Dale Watson, and Robert Mueller, September 26, 2002. See “Complete 9/11 Timeline,” April 23—June 29, 2001: 9/11 ‘Muscle’ Hijackers Arrive in US at This Time or Earlier” (http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a042301muscle&scale=0).

91 “Transcript of Usama bin Laden Video Tape.” 

92 “Bin Laden’s Confession; Is That What It Is?”

93 If bin Laden had done research on this question, he would have found that fires, no matter how big and long-lasting, had never caused steel-framed high-rise buildings to collapse, even partially. He would also have learned that no partial collapse had ever resulted if the fire had been produced by an airplane crashing into the building (as when in 1945 a B-25 bomber struck the Empire State Building and created big fires and a hole 20 feet high (see Norman Glover, Collapse Lessons,” Fire Engineering, October 2002 [http://fe.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Archi&Subsection=Display&P=25&ARTICLE_ID=163411&KEYWORD=norman  %20glover]). And he would have learned that a study of the damage that would be caused to the Twin Towers in particular by the impact of a large airliner, traveling at a high speed, would have consisted of “only local damage which could not cause collapse” (quoted in James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center [New York: Times Books, 2003], 131). 

94 Lawrence is the editor of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (London and New York: Verso, 2005).

95 Lawrence made these statements on February 16, 2007, during a radio interview conducted by Kevin Barrett of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It can be heard at Radio Du Jour (http://www.radiodujour.com/people/lawrence_bruce). Osseiran mischaracterized Lawrence’s position by saying that it was “based on Dr. Lawrence’s ‘friends’ in Homeland Security,” as if Lawrence were not, as a bin Laden expert, voicing his own opinion. What Lawrence said was that his friends in Homeland Security were of the same opinion. 

96 OBLDA 36. Osseiran responded to this statement by saying: “I do resent the use of the word claim by Mr. Griffin as I do not claim, I state.” Osseiran evidently believes that the word “claim” is properly used only to characterize assertions that are false. 

97 OBLDA 36.

98 Osseiran’s main example of my “cherry picking” is the fact that I quoted Ed Haas’s report of a conversation he had with an FBI official (who admitted that the FBI “has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”) but ignored an essay by Haas that disagrees with my position on this video. “Cherry picking,” however, involves citing only the evidence related to some issue that supports one’s hypothesis while ignoring other relevant evidence that counts against one’s hypothesis about that issue. This is a topic I have written about at some length: At the same time I was writing the little book on bin Laden, I was also writing my book on the NIST report about WTC 7 (The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7), a large part of which deals with evidence contradicting NIST’s fire hypothesis that NIST had simply ignored. The principle of scientific method thereby violated by NIST, I suggested, could be phrased thus: “Relevant evidence should not be ignored.” This principle does not entail that if you quote a particular author on one topic, you are obligated to refer to that author’s opinions about other topics. If that were a rule, bibliographies would be impossibly long. 

99 “Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?” Global Research, October 9, 2009 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15601); a slightly revised version was posted at Veterans Today, October 22, 2009 (http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9079).

100 Peritoneal Dialysis, Wikipedia, December 9, 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peritoneal_dialysis). 

101 Ibid.

102 For the video, see “911 Bin Laden at Rawalpindi Hospital September 10th 1 28 2002 CBS” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OW4A-yd9BI); for the text, see “Bin Laden Whereabouts before 9/11,” CBS Evening News with Dan Rather,” January 28, 2002 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CBS203A.html).

David Ray Griffin is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by David Ray Griffin

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18923