Oct. 27, 2004
MSNBC and NBC News
The CIA is unable to authenticate a videotape in which a man claiming to be an al-Qaida terrorist warns of devastating new attacks on the United States, a senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News on Wednesday.
The existence of the tape was first reported Wednesday afternoon by Internet columnist Matt Drudge, who said it was obtained last weekend in Pakistan by ABC News. Drudge quoted an unidentified “senior ABC News source” as saying the network was “working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate” it.
But the senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News that “we can’t authenticate” the tape, a copy of which ABC gave the CIA on Monday. He would not elaborate, adding, “I think that is where we are going to stand.”
U.S. officials told NBC News that the tape included now-standard militant Islamist rhetoric promising widespread destruction inside the United States. The man cannot be identified, the officials said, because his face is covered by a headdress.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, described analysts’ concern as “low” because it was not clear that the tape was recorded recently and because the man on the tape, who spoke in what appeared to be an American accent, mentioned no details.
“It’s unclear what this tape is — even whether the person on the tape is an American,” one of the officials said.
PRE-ELECTION ATTACK WIDELY SPECULATED
Drudge reported the man on the tape claimed that the attacks would be in retribution for “electing George Bush, who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on al-Qaida.”
The possibility of an al-Qaida attack in the days before next week’s presidential election has been widely speculated on, but U.S. intelligence officials said last week that they had no specific intelligence indicating there was a plot by al-Qaida to launch a strike designed to sway voting.
Drudge, quoting unidentified sources, said the man on the tape called himself “Assam the American” and spoke in an American accent. He reported that the man warned that the attack would “dwarf” the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, which killed almost 3,000 people.
“The streets will run with blood” and “America will mourn in silence,” the man said, because it will be unable to count the number of the dead, according to Drudge.
A U.S. official told NBC News that intelligence analysts were speculating that the man could be Adam Pearlman, 25, also known as Adam Gadahn and Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, one of seven people mentioned by FBI Director Robert Mueller in May as someone the United States would like to locate.
The FBI said Pearlman, who is originally from California, attended a terrorist training camp and acted in the past as an al-Qaida translator. U.S. officials said Pearlman was not believed to hold any influential position within al-Qaida.
By MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson with NBC’s Pete Williams in Washington and Robert Windrem in New York.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6345734/