It sounds like bid Laden could have posted his new video on the Daily Kos website:
Officials said bin Laden criticized Democrats in Congress in the video for being unable to stop the war in Iraq.
Details of purported bin Laden video emerge
Officials: No specific threat made; Web sites carrying tape shut down
NBC News and news services
Updated: 12:58 p.m. CT Sept 7, 2007
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has obtained a new video of Osama bin Laden marking the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and is analyzing it, a counterterror official said Friday.
Several intelligence agencies were looking at the 25-minute video — the first new images of the terror leader in nearly three years.
The tape contains no specific threat, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News' Robert Windrem. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Officials said bin Laden criticized Democrats in Congress in the video for being unable to stop the war in Iraq. The al-Qaida leader also urged young Muslims to carry out suicide bombings against the West — a piece of advice he offers in most tapes.
Bin Laden also recommended reading books by American authors Noam Chomsky and Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst, officials said. Chomsky's book cites various examples of American imperialism, while Scheuer's book argues that the U.S. does not understand the Islamic predicament.
Bin Laden also suggests the Jews could have avoided the Holocaust if they had put themselves under the protection of Muslims and indicates that the mujahadeen are now determining U.S. policy.
One U.S. official described the video, which ended bin Laden’s longest period without a message, as "bizarre — as usual."
The al-Qaida leader has not appeared in new video footage since October 2004, and he has not put out a new audiotape in more than a year.
The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday it had no credible information warning of an imminent threat to the United States, and analysts noted that al-Qaida tends to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary with a slew of messages.
“Historically the anniversary of 9/11 has never been drawn to attacks. It’s drawn to video releases,” said Ben Venzke, chief executive officer of IntelCenter, which monitors Islamic Web sites and analyzes terror threats.
Web sites shut down
Soon after Washington announced it had the video, all the Islamic militant Web sites that usually carry statements from al-Qaida went down and were inaccessible, in an unprecedented shutdown.
The reason for the shutdown was not immediately known. Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism expert, said he suspected it was the work of al-Qaida itself, trying to find how the video leaked to U.S. officials.
"For them this is totally disruptive that the U.S. government could have a copy before their targeted audience does," he said. "They could be concerned and trying to plug the leak quickly."
Another possibility is that the U.S. government shut down the sites, but that was unlikely, he said.
"I don't think they would have the legal or technical capability to do so, to collectively shut all these sites at the same time. Also, I don't think the U.S. government is necessarily interested in shutting these sites down, unless there is something so provocative and dangerous in what bin Laden is saying."
"It's pretty remote that the content of his speech is so incendiary that they would shut down all the sites. The idea that they (U.S. government) could totally prevent this from coming out on the Internet is ludicrous," he said.
Bin Laden sports apparently dyed beard
The release of the video may have been driven by reports that bin Laden is dead, Windrem added. U.S. intelligence officials have been quoted, as they were before the 2004 tape, as saying there are equal bodies of evidence that bin Laden was alive or dead.
Al-Qaida’s media arm, Al-Sahab, announced bin Laden’s new message in a banner advertisement on an Islamic militant Web site that included a photo of him.
“Soon, God willing, a videotape from the lion sheik Osama bin Laden, God preserve him,” the advertisement read, signed by Al-Sahab. Such announcements are usually put out one to three days before the video is posted on the Web.
One difference in bin Laden's appearance was immediately obvious. The announcement had a still photo from the coming video, showing bin Laden addressing the camera, his beard fully black. In his past videos, bin Laden’s beard was almost entirely gray with dark streaks.
Bin Laden’s beard appears to have been dyed, a popular practice among Arab leaders, said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a Washington-based group that monitors terror messages.
“I think it works for their (al-Qaida’s) benefit that he looks young, he looks healthy,” Katz said.
The Associated Press and NBC News' Robert Windrem contributed to this report.
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