World News 14-12-2001 Gloating Bin Laden In `Smoking Gun` Video who: Terrorist Osama bin Laden what: Claims to have masterminded Twin Towers attack in video tape evidence released by Pentagon where: Washington DC when: Yesterday snippet: "Its contents had been massively trailed," says The Independent`s Rupert Cornwell, reporting from Washington DC. "The quality of the sound and the fuzziness of the pictures were those of a poor home video. But the impact of the Osama bin Laden videotape released here yesterday was even more devastating and the apparent self-incrimination even more staggering than almost anyone had expected." Today`s newspapers have slavishly transcribed the video described by The White House as a "smoking gun". On the tape, made on November 9th, found late last month at a house in Jalalabad and transmitted by news braodcasters worldwide for the first time yesterday, Osama Bin Laden laughs as he describes the unexpected success of his plan to crash passenger jets into twin towers of the World Trade Centre. The terrorist explains how he watched live television coverage of his atrocities with other members of his al-Qa`eda group. "They were overjoyed when the first plane hit the building," he tells an unidentified Saudi Arabian supporter. "So I said to them, `Be patient`." "We calculated in advance the number of casualties who would be killed based on the position of the tower," he continues. "We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic. Due to my experience in this field [bin Laden`s family made its fortune in the construction industry, explains The Telegraph], I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all we had hoped for." [... more]

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