|
Saturday December 22, 1:21 AM
WHouse defends gaps in bin Laden tape
The White House insisted that poor audio and video quality, not an effort to spare Saudi Arabia, accounts for gaps in the publicly-released transcript of a tape showing Osama bin Laden gloating about the September 11 terror strikes.
The Department of Defense "said it up front all along" it would not release a verbatim transcript because of flaws in the recording, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who read what he said was the full warning.
"'Due to the quality of the original tape it is NOT' -- and that's in large letters -- 'NOT a verbatim transcript of every word spoken during the meeting, but does convey the messages and information flow," the spokesman said.
Any missing words from the transcript released December 13 are "a function of interpreting and translating tapes that are in many places hard to hear," Fleischer told reporters.
US television networks late Thursday reported their translators had uncovered gaps in the recording, which many administration officials view as the "smoking gun" tying the Saudi-born militant to the attacks.
ABC News reported the Pentagon had omitted sections that "could be embarrassing to the government of Saudi Arabia."
At the start of the tape, a Saudi identified as Khalid al-Harbi speaking with bin Laden "seems to claim he was smuggled into Afghanistan by a member of Saudi Arabia's religious police," according to ABC's translation.
The Saudi man also said certain religious leaders in Saudi Arabia, some of them close to the government, had hailed the attacks in their sermons.
In the transcript released by the Pentagon, bin Laden named Mohammed Atta as one of the suicide plane hijackers. But in the ABC version, he also mentioned Saudi nationals Nawaf al-Hazmi and Salim al-Hazmi as part of the operation.
A member of the team that translated the tape for the US government told ABC News the network's translation was consistent with portions of the government's transcript that had not been released to the public.
"That's farfetched," Fleischer told reporters.
More from > World News from AFP
More from > World
| 
