by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post
Government analysts have determined it is “highly probable” that Osama bin Laden’s spokesman recorded an audiotape broadcast Sunday that threatened future terrorist attacks against the United States and said the al Qaeda leader and his top deputy are still alive, a senior administration official said yesterday.
The tape, broadcast over the Qatar-based al-Jazeera network, was said to have been made recently by Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, bin Laden’s chief spokesman. Ghaith appeared with the al Qaeda leader last year on several tapes and in an informal video shot in an Afghan home last November.
Ghaith’s voice on the tape has been tested during the past two days against earlier, recorded broadcasts made by him, said a senior official, who is familiar with the tape. The U.S. experts plan additional tests but yesterday were fairly certain it was authentic, the official said.
Analysts who have reviewed Ghaith’s remarks view them as another effort to “boost morale of bin Laden’s network” and “instill continued fear in the U.S.” with his statement that al Qaeda plans to strike again, the official said.
Given the military setbacks in Afghanistan and a recent series of arrests of al Qaeda personnel in Pakistan, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, U.S. analysts believe “morale among [bin Laden’s] dispersed network has gone relatively low,” the official said. “They are antsy.”
Ghaith’s taking credit for the April bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia is seen as an effort to show both the world and members of the network that al Qaeda is still active and “still capable to do harm.”
Over the past month, e-mails and news releases allegedly from Taliban leader Mohammad Omar have been ineffective in convincing people that the al Qaeda leadership was alive, other senior intelligence officials said. The use of Ghaith was an attempt to show the leadership was functioning and apparently together.
Ghaith said rumors of bin Laden’s sickness arising from U.S. attacks at Tora Bora were “completely inaccurate.” Ghaith also called “completely inaccurate” claims of injuries to Ayman Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s policy chief and bin Laden’s top deputy.
Although both leaders were shown in a recently released videotape on al-Jazeera, that tape was proven to have been made last year. The failure of either bin Laden or Zawahiri to appear publicly or on audiotape, as Ghaith apparently has now done, will keep rumors going that they are either ill or dead. But U.S. intelligence analysts also believe that they are saving their next appearance to coincide with some major future attack, one senior analysts said.
“They work on their own timetable,” a senior official said.
Ghaith said that “al Qaeda is not a fragile organization as some might think” and threatened an attack on America will be “in a time we choose and the place we choose and the method we choose.”