Bin Laden warns U.S. voters

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden injected himself into the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign, warning in a videotape aired yesterday that American voters will be held accountable for electing any president who seeks to destroy al-Qaida and persecutes Muslims.

"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida," bin Laden said, looking thinner but healthier than in previous tapes and speaking in a calm voice. "Your security is in your own hands."

Bin Laden, in his first videotaped address since December 2001, for the first time claimed responsibility for ordering the Sept. 11 attacks. He also ridiculed President Bush and Bush's father.

And he displayed a fluency with American culture, mentioning Manhattan, the Patriot Act and the 2000 election controversy in Florida.

He made no explicit threat and did not issue a call to arms, as he has done frequently since 9/11. The lack of any explicit threats meant the nation's color-coded, terrorism alert-level would probably remain unchanged, officials said.

Although he directed statements to the American public, many intelligence and other counterterrorism experts concluded bin Laden's primary goal was to use the U.S. campaign to enhance his public profile rather than to sway the election.

"The tape is more about his own audience, about getting himself re-elected as the head of the movement, than anything else," said Winston Wiley, former CIA deputy director of intelligence.

But the al-Qaida leader's appearance so close to Election Day prompted President Bush and challenger John Kerry to interrupt campaigning to react.

"He's injecting himself into the campaign to show he's a world player," said Daniel Benjamin, a Clinton administration counterterrorism official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In the tape, bin Laden stands at a podium in a white-and-gold outfit, in front of a brown screen. His environs are not visible, a sharp contrast to previous tapes that have shown him walking through rocky passes.

A CIA spokesman said analysts had a "high degree of confidence" in the tape's authenticity after performing voice and facial analysis. He said the tape, broadcast on the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network, displayed the date of Sunday, Oct. 24.

Bin Laden's speech attacked Bush, his father and their closeness to the Saudi monarchy.

Bin Laden said he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center towers by Israel's 1982 attack on Lebanon, in which U.S. battleships aided with bombardments.

"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, I got the idea of punishing the oppressor the same way, by destroying towers in America so that it would taste some of what we have tasted and stop killing our children and our women," according to a translation by the SITE Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit group that monitors terrorists for the government.

Bin Laden also ridiculed Bush's initial reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks. He said Bush spent precious time "listening to a child discuss her goat," a reference to the minutes after Bush learned of the first attack and continued to sit in a Florida classroom listening to children read. "This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations," bin Laden said.

The crash of an airliner into the second World Trade Center tower occurred just moments after Bush was told of the first crash. A hijacked airliner struck the Pentagon about half an hour after the second tower was hit, and another hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania 20 minutes later.

Bin Laden attacked former President George H.W. Bush, saying he became "enamored" of Arab regimes "half of which are ruled by militaries and the other half ruled by the sons of kings and presidents."

Bin Laden said the elder Bush "became jealous of how they can stay in their positions for decades, stealing the money of their people."

He accused the senior Bush of schooling his son in the corrupt ways of Arab rulers. "He transferred the abuse and limiting of freedoms to his son, who called it a Patriot Act under the pretense of fighting terrorism," bin Laden said, adding that the elder Bush "also did not forget to transfer the experience of these rulers in cheating and fabricating, as his son did in Florida."

Analysts said bin Laden's appearance seem calculated to project an image of a political, rather than military, leader.

"He's trying to appear like a modern leader. He's sitting behind a table and not on the floor," said Diaa Rashwan, a leading expert on Islamic militants at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "Unlike his previous tapes, he's not speaking in a confrontational tone. His presentation is very important because it's tied to his message: He wants to explain to the American people why he ordered the September 11 attacks and explain their consequences."

Bush has rarely spoken to reporters in his final campaign sprint, but he paused in Toledo to talk about the tape.

"Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country," he said. "I'm sure Senator Kerry agrees with this. I also want to say to the American people that we're at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail."

About the same time, Kerry told reporters in West Palm Beach, Fla.: "As Americans, we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. They are barbarians. And I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes. Period."

Earlier, however, in a television interview, he said that Bush "outsourced" the hunt for bin Laden and said, "We are paying the price for it today."

Material from Newsday is included in this report.