The Most Wanted Face of Terrorism

The Aftermath

After the attacks of Sept. 11, bin Laden did what had become routine: He took to Arab television. He appeared, in his statement to the world, to be at the top of his powers. President Bush had declared that the nations of the world were either with the Americans or against them on terrorism; bin Laden held up a mirror image, declaring the world divided between infidels and believers.

Bin Laden had never before claimed or accepted responsibility for terrorist attacks. In a videotape found in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar weeks after the attacks, he firmly took responsibility for — and revelled in — the horror of Sept. 11.

“We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower,” he said. “We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all.”

In the videotape, showing him talking to followers nearly two months after the attacks, Bin Laden smiles, hungers to hear more approval, and notes proudly that the attacks let loose a surge of interest in Islam around the world.

He explained that the hijackers on the planes — “the brothers who conducted the operation” — did not know what the mission would be until just before they boarded the planes. They knew only that they were going to the United States on a martyrdom mission.

Bin Laden had long eluded the allied forces in pursuit of him, moving, it was said, under cover of night with his wives and children, apparently between mountain caves. Yet he was determined that if he had to die, he, too, would die a martyr’s death.

His greatest hope, he told supporters, was that if he died at the hands of the Americans, the Muslim world would rise up and defeat the nation that had killed him.