You are wrong to jump to the conclusion the tape is doctored - you clearly like to find fault with America and will easily bend over backward to do so even when there is no good reason to do so. More about additional translations of the tape - seems the initial translation was done quickly and erred on the cautious side.
msnbc.com
A MORE LEISURELY review of the tape released by the government last week came up with “a whole bunch of names,” translator George Michael said Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press. He would identify only three: Nawaf Alhazmi, Salem Alhazmi and Wail Alshehri.
An independent translator, who is a native Saudi, told the AP that bin Laden also uttered the name Alghamdi several times in reference to suspected hijackers Ahmed Alghamdi, Hamza Alghamdi and Saeed Alghamdi.
Ahmed and Hamza Alghamdi were aboard United Flight 175, the second plane to crash into the World Trade Center, according to federal officials. Saeed Alghamdi died aboard United Flight 93, which crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
Alshehri was on American Airlines Flight 11, one of the planes that hit the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York.
“You’ll have to talk to the Pentagon about the rest,” Michael said.
In addition, a separate translation indicates that bin Laden’s visitor, Saudi fighter Khaled al-Harbi, describes how he was smuggled into Afghanistan and attaches the words “jalad alhayaa” — a name for the Saudi religious police — to the smuggler’s name.
That additional translation, made for the AP by Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi who listened to the tape, echoes yet another translation by ABC News. If al-Harbi’s comments are true, it would mark a closer tie between the Saudi government and bin Laden’s allies than previously acknowledged.
A member of the team that translated the tape for the Pentagon said the additional translation by ABC was consistent with parts not yet released by U.S. officials.
POOR SOUND QUALITY
Michael, who was one of two translators hired by Pentagon officials for an outside assessment of the tape, provided U.S. officials with a more detailed transcript Wednesday afternoon.
On Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke said there had been no attempt to omit any information in the original translation. “Every attempt was made to give you the best translation [the Department of Defense] could” provide. She acknowledged that with more time, translators could probably have gleaned more from the less intelligible portions of tape.
The White House echoed that sentiment, saying there was no deliberate effort to omit words. “I think that’s farfetched,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
The tape and transcripts of its contents were first released last week. On it, bin Laden describes in detail his familiarity with the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington and makes it apparent that he was at least partly involved in their planning. He told a gathered group of aides and guests that the terror attacks had surpassed his “most optimistic” expectations.
CALM AND AMUSED
Bin Laden appeared calm and at times amused as he talked about the attacks on the hour-long tape, dated Nov. 9, which the Bush administration said was found in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden’s voice was difficult to hear on the videotape, and government-hired translators at several points wrote “inaudible” when they didn’t agree on an interpretation or when they couldn’t make out the words.
The first government translation disclosed that bin Laden mentioned Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the terrorists, but none of the other hijackers’ names were in the first transcript.
In the more thorough, updated version, Michael said, bin Laden names several hijackers and says: “May God accept their action.”
References bin Laden made in the original transcription of the tape released last week already tied him to the attacks — but naming and blessing the hijackers suggests an intimacy that would reinforce U.S. claims of his deep involvement in the planning.
The names only emerged now, Michael said, because the first translation was rushed in 12 hours, in a room in the Pentagon. It took four days to complete the fuller transcript in the comfort of his own office, Michael said.
“We did the first translation under a tight time frame,” he said.
Michael, who is originally Lebanese, translated the tape with Kassem Wahba, an Egyptian. Both men had difficulties with the Saudi dialect bin Laden and his guest use in the tape, Michael said.
Attempts to reach Wahba for comment were unsuccessful.
REMAINING MYSTERIES
Some passages remain a mystery, Michael said: Bin Laden’s Saudi guest names the person who smuggled him from Saudi Arabia into Afghanistan. Michael and Wahba were unable to make out the name, and Michael said that if anyone was able to identify the name, it would be a Saudi.
Al-Ahmed, a Saudi native who directs a Washington think tank, said the government had asked him for his own completed translation.
If the connection between bin Laden’s visitor and Saudi officials were proven, it would probably embarrass the Saudi government.
In the first, rushed translation the Pentagon published last week, bin Laden tells his guest that 15 of the hijackers knew they were on a “martyrdom operation” but learned of the details only shortly before boarding their planes.
Among bin Laden’s guests seen talking about the Sept. 11 attacks were al-Harbi; legless Saudi veteran of battles in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya; and Sheik Ali bin Said al-Ghandi, a radical Saudi cleric known for anti-Western views.
NBC’s Tammy Kupperman and The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
