Top Bin Laden Expert: The Tapes are Fakes
Kevin Barrett
As a PhD in Islamic and Arabic Studies, I hate to say this, but I’ll say it anyway. The events of 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam. The war on terror itself is as phony as the latest “Bin Laden tape.” (Guardian 04)
It’s tough to admit because I know on which side my bread is buttered - and dropping Islam from the 9/11 equation is like dropping my bread butter-side-down. The myth that 9/11 had something to do with has poured millions into Arabic and Islamic studies. I finished my PhD in 2005, so all I have to do is keep my eyes in my pocket and my nose to the ground, parrot the party line, and I’ll be on the fast track to tenure.
The trouble is, it’s all based on a big lie. Take the recent “Bin Laden tape,” - please! That voice was no more Bin Laden than it was my late Aunt Corinne from Peoria. I recently helped translate a previously unknown Bin Laden tape, a real one from the early 90’s, back when he was still alive. I know the guy’s flowery religious rhetoric. The recent tape certainly wasn't him.
The top American Bin Laden expert agrees. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies Department, has just finished a book of translations of Bin Laden’s speeches. He says the recent tape is a fake and that Bin Laden has been dead for years. (ABC 2004).
Ersatz Bin Laden tapes “verified” by the CIA are nothing new. Every Bin Laden statement since 2001 has been blatantly bogus. The last we heard from the real Bin Laden were the following words recorded by Pakistani journalists: “I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation . . . I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks on the United States . . . I had no knowledge of these attacks. . .” (Wiki 2004)
Then, on December 13, 2001, as George Bush was whining about the “outrageous conspiracy theories” that were spreading like wildfire, the first and shoddiest of the “Bin Laden Speaks from the Grave” tapes appeared. The video’s sound and picture quality were horrible. It showed a big guy with a black beard, doing a passable imitation of Bin ’s voice, claiming foreknowledge, if not responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and chortling over their success. The trouble was, the big guy was clearly not Bin Laden. He was at least 40 or 50 pounds heavier and his facial features were obviously different. (911Res 2005)
The “Fatty Bin Laden tape” was widely ridiculed and I have yet to meet an informed observer who considers it authentic. (If you haven’t figured this out yet, go back and look at the images from the tape and compare them to other images of Bin Laden.) But the media let the fraud pass without asking the hard questions. Why was the US government waving this blatantly fake “confession” video in our faces?
Perhaps due to the widespread hilarity evoked by Fatty Bin Laden, the next Ousama-from-beyond-the-grave message had no images: It was an audio tape delivered to al-Jazeera in the fall of 2002. The CIA verified it as “authentic,” but ended up with egg on its face when the world’s leading voice identification experts at IDIAP in Switzerland reported that “the message was recorded by an impostor.” (Guardian 2002)
Every Bin Laden message since then has been equally phony. They are released at moments when the Bush regime needs a boost - and the American (mainstream) media go along with the fraud. Remember the bogus Bin Laden tape that made headlines right before the 2004 elections? If you didn’t figure out that it was a CIA-produced commercial for George Bush, I have some great bridges to sell you. Walter Cronkite, bless his heart, opined that Karl Rove was behind that tape. (CNN ) But the rest of the media just kept pretending that the Emperor was clothed.
And the fraud continues. Last week’s Bin Laden tape has been ridiculed by America’s top Bin Laden expert, yet the US media gamely held its tattered fig leaf over the Emperor’s loins. Professor Lawrence believes that the tape was designed to distract world opinion from the horrific massacre of Pakistani civilians by an errant CIA drone. But it may have another, more sinister purpose: To prepare public opinion for another false-flag 9/11-style attack designed to trigger a US-Israel nuclear attack on Iran. (AC 2005)
As our top Bin Laden expert Professor Lawrence says, the real Bin Laden, who insisted that he had nothing to do with 9/11, has been dead since 2001. The fake messages have been fabricated by al-CIA-duh to support the Bush regime and its phony “war on terror.” It is time for Americans to rise up against the masters of synthetic terror who have been looting the US taxpayer, torching the Constitution, demolishing the economy, and threatening a nuclear Armageddon.
