Video Killed the Terrorist Star
The noose tightens.

By James S. Robbins, a national-security analyst & NRO contributor
December 14, 2001 9:00 a.m.

n the newly released Osama bin Laden videotape the terror master states, "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." This Nietzchean excursion is almost a non sequitur — his interlocutor had been talking about the accommodations — and it is an amazingly unselfconscious statement considering the fact that lately bin Laden hasn't exactly been a contender for the Triple Crown.

The bin Laden tape was made sometime in mid-November, about the time the writing was on the wall for al Qaeda. Bin Laden is shown looking relaxed, smiling, drinking tea, and holding court with his associates. It is a surreal scene. One is reminded of stories told by Albert Speer of Adolf Hitler's behavior as the noose began to close around him, recounting stories of past triumphs with great nostalgia, and speaking excitedly of the days ahead when he and Speer would design and build a new modern Berlin, the capital of a united, national socialist Europe, with a massive victory arch at its center. Soon Berlin would be flattened and Hitler dead, but he was a believer in his personal destiny to the end. The delusions in the bin Laden tape are manifest — the unnamed shayk with whom he is speaking states that "People now are supporting us more, even those ones who did not support us in the past, support us more now." He seems to be talking about public support in Saudi Arabia or perhaps in the Muslim world generally. Clearly bin Laden had been counting on a Muslim uprising if the West mounted an armed counterattack after September 11, and even by mid-November he might have been expecting riots to break out at any minute. Perhaps he still thinks the masses will save him — bin Laden has issued a letter to the "true Muslims" of Pakistan to come to his aid. His denunciation of Pakistan in the first week of November had a hint of desperation; the recent letter is simply pathetic. Hopefully we will no longer hear American pundits talking about the "Muslim street" as a locus of power.

Bin Laden grasps for concrete signs of success. One tangible benefit of the attack — people wanting to learn more about Islam. "In Holland," he says, "at one of the centers, the number of people who accepted Islam during the days that followed the operations were more than the people who accepted Islam in the last eleven years." Eleven times the usual number? I'm guessing that they were starting from a very low base. And if the impending Dutch jihad is the best thing bin Laden has to show for his efforts, it is hardly a prudent trade-off considering that over 300 million people in the strongest country in the world want his head.

The tape has a number of useful operational details that clear up a few questions. Mohammed Atta was in charge, as suspected. The planning and operational groups were compartmentalized. The cell structures were secret, and even kept secret from the cells — the strike teams didn't assemble until the day of the attack. Only a few of the hijackers knew they were on a suicide mission, so the fanaticism and level of dedication of al Qaeda isn't as deep as had been supposed — only four voluntary martyrs instead of 20. And it also goes to show they will victimize their own men, a good message to discourage potential recruits. It is also interesting that the leadership did not know how effective the attacks would be — they had not planned for the towers to collapse, and bin Laden was the "most optimistic" in even believing the upper floors would fold up. Personally, I never once believed they were smart enough to have figured out how to bring the towers down; and besides, the fact that they did collapse only catapulted the event to a level of brutality and horror that gave instant legitimacy to any allied response. And hitting the Pentagon? The home office? The place where Secretary Rumsfeld goes to work every day? The sheer stupidity of that act is still breathtaking.

And the strangest parts of the tape, the parts that give us deep insight into the intellectual, emotional, and strategic limitations of bin Laden, are those in which he and others discuss their "visions." Dreams and omens are referred to throughout the video, and in very earnest tones. Abu-Al-Hasan Al-Masri, a Talib, was quoted as saying he had a dream about a soccer game with America in which the al Qaeda team were pilots — this a year prior to the attack and with no knowledge of the plot. A couple other people had visions of planes hitting buildings, and the more they remembered the clearer the "omens" became. In fact so many al Qaeda psychics were having premonitions that bin Laden became nervous about operational security. After hearing someone talk about a prescient dream shortly before the attack, bin Laden said, "at that point, I was worried that maybe the secret would be revealed if everyone starts seeing it in their dreams. So I closed the subject. I told him if he sees another dream, not to tell anybody, because people will be upset with him." They really take this nonsense seriously.

Augury can be tricky business. I was reminded of Croesus, King of Lydia, who was contemplating war with the Persians. He consulted the Delphic Oracle and was told that if he attacked, "he would destroy a great empire." Little did he know that the oracle was referring to Lydia. Shaykh Salih Al-Shuaybi is mentioned as having had his own vision a year prior to the attack — "There will be a great hit and people will go out by hundreds to Afghanistan." Of course those hundreds could have been the Marines and Special Forces.

Most commentary in the United States has focused on the question, is the tape "evidence?" Will it stand up in court? Among those who think it won't is Hani al-Subai, a London-based "researcher in the affairs of Islamic groups" who gave his assessment of the evidentiary value of the video on al Jazeera. "The internationally accepted principle governing criminal procedures primarily stipulates that the original video material should be kept with the competent public prosecutor's office," he said. "The material should be kept sealed in a special case or envelope and the seal can be broken only in front of the judicial authority. The videotape has been tampered with .... We all know that there is the so-called mixing and montage. ...They can change the voice of a man into that of a woman, or turn the voice of an elderly man into that of a young boy. This technology, which can amend colors and everything, does not hold any grounds in front of the judicial authorities." This is the problem with treating everything like a legal question. Our forces and operatives in Afghanistan have enough to worry about without getting into a "chain of custody" food fight, and our policymakers have better things to do with their time than to deal with these types of speculative arguments. Why do people insist on dragging lawyers into this war? Don't they want to win?

The only reason the authenticity of the tape would be relevant would be for those die-hards who think that someone other than bin Laden was responsible for the September 11 attacks. They should note well the part of the video in which bin Laden states that on the day of the attack, "the congratulations were coming on the phone non-stop." One can imagine the content of those conversations. But my guess is one won't have to just imagine them. If these calls were made, they were probably intercepted, and if intercepted, they will be revealed eventually. In fact there is no doubt all kinds of intelligence out there we don't know about that proves the case conclusively. Personally, I don't want to know the details, not for a long time. It does no good for me to know now, but it could do harm to our intel networks if the information went public. Remember, this video is intelligence, not evidence. The allies are at war, not engaging in law enforcement by means of strategic bombers. Bin Laden is not a criminal, he is an enemy of humanity. The Fourth Amendment does not exist in Tora Bora.

A report in London's Arabic Al-Hayah newspaper stated that in one portion of videotape a man standing off camera made derogatory comments about the behavior of the U.S. national leadership in the hours after the attack: "One seeks shelter and the other is underground." Perhaps this statement was not audible or clear enough to be included in the DOD transcription, but irony abounds — three months later it applies to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. Call it a vision, or an omen, or the end of a dream.