What IS al-qaeda? It literally means base, or rather database that the CIA held of the then mujahedin fighting the soviets that the US funded.
Bin laden over and over again said he did not and was not a part of the plot that occured. He's been interviewed several times. What he has mentioned though in his interviews is the atrocities of the United States over and over again and apparently that's 'proof' that he did it?!?! Makes no sense.
Full transcript of Bin Laden's 2004 speech
http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html"Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred.
"So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which
the decision was taken, for you to consider.
"I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon,
it came to my mind."
"And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon,
it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.
"So with these images and their like as their background,
the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?"