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American Morning

Translation of Tape May Have Left Parts Out

Aired December 21, 2001 - 09:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: As we have been reporting this morning, it turns out that the government translation of the Osama bin Laden home video, released just last week, may not have been complete. New translators say the Bush administration's official transcript missed details about the September 11th attacks as well as some troubling information that could affect U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia. Here now more from Washington with more on the tale of the tape is CNN's David Ensor. Good morning, David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. Well, as you know the tape is famous by now for showing Osama bin Laden bragging about the attacks of September 11th, but what a Saudi dissident now says, and an independent translator that was hired by CNN confirmed for us is that the government left some significant, interesting parts of what bin Laden said out of its official translation into English.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED TRANSLATOR: The translators missed a lot of things on the tape. They missed the names of the hijackers. Two of them mentioned by full names. They missed that four hijackers who come from the same tribe were also mentioned, not by name, but by their tribe name.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: On the tape, bin Laden names two additional hijackers, the brothers Nawaq Alhamzi and Salem Alhamzi, and later he says that four other hijackers were from the Alghamdi tribe, and names two more, Alshehri. Including Mohammed Atta, then, he names nine of the hijackers, not just one. Also left out of translation, the names of some Saudi clerics that bin Laden's visitor says on the tape have publicly backed the attacks, including one, a government official named Sheikh Abdel Rahman al-Baraq (ph), whose name was changed in the translation that the U.S. government made.

And one more striking example of detail left out in the government translation: bin Laden's description of exactly what he said to others just before the radio announcement was heard that the first of the attacks had succeeded. "when you hear a breaking news announcement on the radio," he says he told followers, "kneel immediately. That means they have hit the World Trade Center." All in all, these details paint, if anything, a still more damaging picture of bin Laden. A bin Laden who knew the names of most of the hijackers and told his followers before hand to get ready for the World Trade Center hit -- Paula.

ZAHN: Remind everybody this morning of exactly what Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesperson, said yesterday when a number of you questioned him about these translations.

ENSOR: Well, he said that he wasn't sure what the -- if there were any problems, he wasn't aware of them, and that we should talk to the Department of Defense about that. Now, I've talked -- we made calls to a couple of the translators who were involved in the government effort, and one didn't respond, the other said he didn't want to talk about it, but I understand that the method used was that several translators, including an outsider, did their own translations, compared them, and tried to come up with a consensus on what was on that tape, and where they didn't agree or couldn't hear something, they left it out, and as a result, as you can see, some fairly intriguing details, that if you play the tape over and over again and listen closely, you can hear quite clearly -- I heard them myself, some of those details were just left out.

ZAHN: So we had Senator Lieberman as a guest on the show earlier this morning and we asked him about his reaction to your report, and he said he found it very hard to believe these critical things would have been left out, and he said that Congress will want to hear some answers to these questions from the administration. Does -- have you heard any more reaction from other members of Congress so far this morning?

ENSOR: I have not. No, but I understand that one of the translators has prepared a more complete translation and offered it to the Defense Department. It may be that the government will soon put out a more complete English translation. They did put out a more complete Arabic translation, and after all, the Arabic tape, in its entirety, has been played and those who know Arabic as a native language are able to hear all these details for themselves -- Paula.

ZAHN: But the bottom line is, David, whether this was done intentionally or whether it was missed because of the process you talked about that was used. You got people out there saying "was this a conspiracy, or was this a snafu?" It's fueling a whole new fire, is it not, about the content of these tapes?

ENSOR: It's obviously an unfortunate development. I think the U.S. government was in a hurry to get this tape out, and was in a hurry to get a translation that -- at least of the basic parts of the tape, and in their hurry, which was caused by the fact that the news media got wind of the fact there was a tape, they left some parts out. Nothing that changes the basic picture of bin Laden, mind you, as basically admitting and bragging about the attacks, but some interesting details that, in fact in, a way make him look even worse.

ZAHN: Well, we appreciate you setting the record straight this morning. David Ensor. Thank you. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com