Bin Laden's public statements, revealed
Posted on Friday, September 12, 2008 5:54 PM ET
By NBC News
In 2004, the U.S. government compiled a 289-page collection of Osama Bin Laden's earliest interviews and public statements. The texts were translated by the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service. The voluminous report has never been approved for public release. But a copy was obtained by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, with a link published in Aftergood's Secrecy News blog.
The government report chronicles Bin Laden's growing radicalization. It opens with a March 1994 newspaper interview, in which the al-Qaeda leader denies being a terrorist. The newspaper benignly describes Bin Laden as a "Saudi businessman."
"The accusation that we support terrorism is a hostile, imperialist method designed to suppress Muslims' determination and paralyze their movement toward one another and toward their religion and faith," Bin Laden told the paper.
The government report ends a decade later, after the 9-11 attacks, with an audio message broadcast by the Al-Jazeera television network. In it, Bin Laden calls for attacks against the United States and its allies. "There can be no dialogue with occupiers except through arms," Bin Laden said. "This is what we need today, and what we should seek."
