This selection from my interview with leading Bin Laden expert Bruce Lawrence, a professor at Duke University, was recorded for my radio show on Februrary 16, 2007. Below is an article I published not long after the interview.
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 Islam 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 Laden’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 Osama-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 ...
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