Bin Laden tape a chilling account of terrorists' plan

In a chilling glimpse of terrorist planning, Osama bin Laden said in a videotape released Thursday by the Pentagon that the deaths and destruction achieved by the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations.

Bin Laden appeared calm and at times amused as he talked about the attacks on the hour-long tape the Bush administration said was found in Afghanistan. U.S. warplanes pressed the hunt for him and his supporters there Thursday.

"We calculated in advance the number of ... enemy who would be killed," at the World Trade Center, bin Laden said on the tape. "We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic."

Gesturing with his hands, he said he had figured that the burning jet fuel "would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit" and take down only the floors above it.

"This is all that we had hoped for," he said, holding one hand up vertically and striking it with the other as though it were a plane hitting a building.

Television networks broke into regular programming to show at least part of the tape released by the administration as evidence bin Laden masterminded the attacks.

Some Americans reacted with anger.

"I changed the channel," said Anthony Gambale, whose daughter, Giovanna, was killed at the World Trade Center.

In New York City, scores of people gathered in Times Square to watch the tape on a giant screen.

Educator 'relieved'

In Cape Girardeau some were also riveted.

"In some ways, I'm relieved," said Alynna Lyon. "At least we can pinpoint the enemy," she said.

Lyon, who teaches international politics and Middle East courses at Southeast Missouri State University, said the tapes will have more significance in the Middle East than in the United States.

While most Americans were fairly convinced Bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, other countries were more skeptical and unwilling to criticize al-Qaida or the Taliban.

With this new evidence, allies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries will have a difficult time keeping their distance, she said.

Russell Renka, another political science professor at Southeast, said he found the video to be "remarkably chilling" and Bin Laden's mild reaction to the number of people killed evidence of his "pridefull arrogance."

In the Mideast, where Arab satellite channels aired the tape and public opinion has been against the United States, some were unconvinced of bin Laden's involvement.

"The translation is wrong, and we hardly heard his voice. America just wants to implicate Muslims," said Nadia Saqr, an Egyptian mother of two.

Amateur tape

It was unknown who made the tape, an amateurish recording edited with English subtitles by U.S. government and private translators. It showed a meeting officials said was between bin Laden, an unidentified Saudi sheik and other men somewhere in southern Afghanistan last month.

Both Renka and Lyon said the tape seems to be authentic.

"I've heard bin Laden before, I've no doubt that was him," Renka said.

"It looked very genuine to me," Lyon said.

She said the tape showed Bin Laden's "extreme corruption of Islam," particularly his attitude about murder.

"Devout Muslims will have to reject him," Lyon said.

Smoking gun

Several lawyers said the tape, if shown to be authentic, is the proof needed to support many of the charges the United States has made against bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network.

"Everybody praises what you did, the great action you did, which was first and foremost by the grace of Allah," the sheik said. "This is the guidance of Allah and the blessed fruit of Jihad."

"Thanks to Allah," replied bin Laden.

Bin Laden discussed some of the planning and recalled tuning in to the radio to hear American news broadcasts of the attacks.

"They were overjoyed when the first plane hit the building," he said of others listening with him that day. "So I said to them: Be patient."

President Bush "has known all along that Osama bin Laden was behind this," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "It came as no surprise to the president."

"It is frightening and shocking to sit there and listen to him invoke the name of the almighty to defend murder, to defend evil," said Secretary of State Colin Powell.

When told by the AP that bin Laden was shown on the tape identifying his son as the leader of the cell that carried out the attacks, 65-year-old Mohammed al-Amir al-Sayed Awad Atta was angry and skeptical.

"All this is a forgery, a fabrication," said the senior Atta, who maintained Mohamed Atta's identification papers might have been stolen to implicate him in the attacks.

'Great job,' says sheik

The hijackings were a martyrdom operation, bin Laden said, sitting on a flowered floor mat in a sparsely furnished room and talking and eating with two aides and the sheik.

The sheik, identified by a U.S. official as Saudi cleric Sheik Sulayman, praised bin Laden for "a great job."

"No doubt it is a clear victory ... and he (Allah) will give us blessing and more victory during this holy month of Ramadan," he said.

Most American Muslims will mark the ending of Ramadan on Sunday.

Bin Laden's whereabouts are unknown -- a $25 million reward has been posted for information leading to his capture. "We think he's in Afghanistan. We are chasing him. He is hiding. He does not want us to know where he is," said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The tape had a homemade quality to it, punctuated by background noises, coughing and a shot or two of the cameraman's shoes as he shakily panned the camera from one spot to another.

At times bin Laden and the others continued speaking but the subtitles didn't change, making it difficult to tell what words corresponded to gestures. The Pentagon said it couldn't get a "verbatim transcript of every word spoken" because of the bad quality of the tape's sound.

The two private translators hired by the government disagreed at times over what bin Laden and his associates were saying, which explains why the English subtitles are punctuated with the word "inaudible," according to one of the translators.

Earlier in the fall, administration officials had appealed to U.S. TV networks not to air videotapes made by bin Laden, saying they might contain coded messages to his followers to carry out additional attacks.

Staff writer Andrea L. Buchanan contributed to this report.