Professional Documents
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The Construction of The Enemy: Representations of Terrorists in The Aftermath of Attack
The Construction of The Enemy: Representations of Terrorists in The Aftermath of Attack
The Construction of The Enemy: Representations of Terrorists in The Aftermath of Attack
I. Introduction
The world that American media consumers live in is large, complicated and often unfamiliar.
While the lived experiences of daily life tend to be familiar and routine, the media provides a window
through which consumers can observe the lived experiences of others, whether they are fellow
countrymen, global celebrities, or disadvantaged others in faraway lands (Silverstone 2007: 45). In
many respects, this function of the media is useful for people, as it can provide information and
entertainment, as well as a sense of identity or community. It can lead people to share in the excitement
of a sporting event like the World Cup, or to sympathize with people in other lands suffering from a
drought, war or famine. However, the media can also be severely limited in the breadth and depth of its
work. Some of these limits are a consequence of the format (there are only so many column inches or
minutes of airtime), while others are far more complicated and deeply-rooted. These are the bugbears
of bias and partiality which wiggle their way into all of the decisions made by media professionals:
from the choice of words that they use, to the selection and placement of the photographs they print, to
the decision of which stories to carry in the next edition, and which to cut.
As a consequence of these decisions made by journalists and editors, their audiences may
remain unaware or insufficiently informed of any number of subjects. In many or most cases, this may
ultimately have no effect on the lived experience of consumers; although they may remain unaware of
some great triumph or challenge or suffering, their lives continue just the same. However, sometimes
events or actors of those underreported situations make their presence felt in forceful, undeniable ways
that not only materially affect the lived experiences of American media consumers, but catch them
completely by surprise and cause them great distress. At times like these, media consumers look
towards journalists and the news media – the ones who failed to warn them of any impending danger,
or who did but they nonetheless failed to heed – to provide them with information, with context, with
reason.
It is in this setting of imperfect information that American media consumers react to reports of
the attacks on American political and economic interests that began occurring in greater frequency in
the mid-1990s. Americans, for the most part, did not know why they were being subjected to attack,
nor who was responsible for the assaults which quickly came to be known as 'terrorism'1. What they
knew was that American citizens (mostly soldiers, but also members of the diplomatic services as well
as contractors, businesspeople and even tourists) were dying, and American interests and facilities were
being physically assaulted and sometimes destroyed. They also knew that these events were occurring
in unfamiliar places that they knew little about: East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East.
Who were the people responsible for these attacks? Why were they doing this? Americans turned to
their government, but perhaps even more to the media, for the answers.
The role of the media, then, becomes paramount to the interpretation of events by those
subjected to attack, to the explanation of the circumstances leading to this point and, crucially, to the
depiction and characterization of the perpetrators. In the immediate aftermath of an attack, the media
plays a crucial role in informing its audience about events – fulfilling its journalistic responsibility and
providing the who, what, where, when and how of events. However, in its undertaking of these
responsibilities, journalists tread a very fine line between informing and prejudicing its audience. And
the perpetrators themselves, by the means they choose to accomplish their goals – which, in at least
some cases, is to bring attention to a perceived injustice perpetrated by the United States – do little to
create conditions that would welcome an informed discussion or negotiation over their grievance. Far
from bringing to light a perhaps legitimate complaint, acts of terrorism instead create yet greater
oppositions and further obscure the issues over which these events occur. Instead of building bridges,
these acts burn them. Instead of fostering greater mutual understanding and sympathy, they breed
hatred and distrust. Instead of helping people of different groups recognize that which they all share,
1 There is a large and lively debate that exists concerning the language of the American War on Terror, to which I intend
to contribute my most modest piece. However, I am most interested in evaluating and analyzing the use of language by
the print media, and with due respect to those who deplore its employment (see, for instance, Karim 2002), I will use the
terms terrorist and terrorism in this essay, if only for convenience sake.
they rather solidify in the minds of those who are attacked a sense of what separates them, reinforcing
counterproductive dichotomies of Us versus Them, Justice versus Tyranny, Good versus Evil.
In the context of this troubling situation, then, is there any solution? The actions of terrorists are
destructive and despicable, but they are also desperate, a resorting to violence in the absence of any
progress by other means. This of course does not excuse or justify their actions – I do not, by any
means, intend to suggest that - but it does illuminate an important fact of terrorist attacks that is often
overlooked: there is a motivation behind them, and it is not always so irrational as some may say. This
is the 'Why' that is notably absent from the list of journalistic responsibilities above, and also from the
vast majority of coverage of terrorist attacks (Zelizer and Allan 2002:11), which is so important to
properly and fully inform media consumers. To the degree that we can accept that people who resort to
terrorism may in some cases have legitimate grievances, why is it that American media consumers are
unaware of those grievances? And what role does the media, and its characterization of terrorists or
terrorist groups in the moment when the media spotlight is peering most brightly at them – in the
immediate aftermath of an attack – play in the depiction or representation of terrorists and their
motives?
In this study, I intend to examine and analyze the initial response and reporting of the American
print media to acts that have come to be known as terrorist attacks organized and/or orchestrated by
Osama bin Laden, the reputed financier, iconic leader and so-called 'mastermind' of al-Qaida, the
militant Islamic terror organization (9/11 Report 2004: 56). To focus the study, and to examine the way
that news reports – even from the very beginning – confront choices, make decisions and cast
judgments in their reporting and coverage, I will look at newspaper reports from the day following the
attacks. These articles, which are in all cases the first report of the events in their publication, are not
breaking news. In the current media system, first reports would have come from wire services and 24-
hour television news networks or radio dispatches. In this case, the newspaper articles serve less to
inform their readers of the occurrence of events (although certainly there will sometimes be readers
who were unaware of them), and more to contextualize and frame them (Zelizer and Allan 2002: 7).
This study is concerned with evaluating how these first reports describe events, ascribe labels to the
perpetrators and name presumed or positively identified responsible parties. This evaluation will be in
the service of answering this question: do initial reports of incidents of terrorism in the American print
media, through the use of key words and emotional triggers, play a principal role in creating those
To approach the answer to this question I have conducted a content analysis on articles from
four American print news sources: the New York Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer and the Associated Press. A content analysis was selected because it provides a
repeatable, quantifiable means for observing whether trends or practices can be detected in a body of
texts (Gunter 2000: 60). While content analysis is not always the ideal form of analysis for texts such
as newspaper articles, which can be subject to different interpretations by different readers, due to the
narrowness of the study and the parameters of the analysis (identifying the presence or absence or
specific words, for instance) I believe that it is suitable in this case. Naturally, the volume of articles
printed by even just the four news sources named on terror attacks is enormous, and so further efforts
were necessary to narrow the focus in order to extract valuable results from the analysis.
For the purposes of this study, I examined front-page stories from the first issue following
terrorist attacks against American interests in each of the daily newspapers, and the first 24 hours of
coverage in the case of the newswire. The terrorist attacks in question are the 1998 attacks on American
embassies in East Africa, the 2000 attack of the USS Cole warship in Yemen and the 2001 attacks on
the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the United States of America. In my analysis I will examine
the choices made by the news organizations in the depiction and/or identification of the perpetrators in
print and newswire news sources in the United States. The New York Times, sometimes referred to as
America's newspaper of record, is a nationally distributed newspaper with a circulation of over one
million copies daily (Saba 2008). It plays a major role in framing and developing the national
discussion on any number of issues and events, and has traditionally since the 20th century devoted
considerable resources to foreign news reporting. As such, it is well suited to be a part of this study
despite the presence of some newspapers with higher circulations such as USA Today.
over 300,000 (ibid). It was chosen both because of its size as well as its geographic location in the
American South. Because reports of acts of terrorism are carried in newspapers across the nation, and
the consequences of their occurrence can be felt far beyond the immediate location of the attack, the
study would benefit from a variety of sources that would allow me to analyze coverage from various
regions of the country, and the AJC is the largest daily newspaper in the South.
over 125,000 (Pryne 2007). It was selected partly because of its regional location in the Pacific
Northwest as well as its size, which represents another segment of the American newspaper market.
The Associated Press (AP), a newswire service based in New York City but with bureaus in 97
countries, has 1,700 newspaper subscribers in the United States (AP 2007). The AP describes itself as
“the largest and oldest news organization in the world, serving as a source of news, photos, graphics,
audio and video,” and its reporters provide frequently updated reports to newspapers around the globe
who reprint them. The AP was chosen for the study because it is an important element of the American
print media, with many smaller (as well as larger) newspapers relying on it to provide international
news coverage that they do not have the funds to supply on their own.
The coding frame (see Appendix A) will be applied to all articles and will seek to identify
descriptive elements of the stories (publication title, type and length of article) as well as investigative
elements (the presence and frequency of the word 'terror' or 'terrorism', 'Osama bin Laden', 'suicide
bombing', names of terrorist organizations suspected or identified as being responsible for the attacks
and names of countries mentioned in relation to the attacks). In order to gauge the development of
dichotomies at the heart of this study, the number and tone of direct quotations from official sources
such as the President and his secretaries, generals and advisors were also tabulated. A presentation and
There is ample literature on the representation of terror in America after September 11th (see, for
example, Merskin 2005 and Kellner 2007), in which it is argued that political leaders in Washington
D.C. and mass media outlets throughout the country have demonized and stereotyped Arabs and
Muslims as terrorists (Merskin 2005: 121). Through the use of suggestive language like 'evil-doers' to
describe terrorists, as President Bush did shortly after September 11th (Perez-Rivas 2001), the
government and the news media who carry their message, collaborate (willingly or otherwise) in
“dehumaniz[ing] the 'other' as part of the construction of an enemy image in the popular imagination”
(Merskin 2005: 123). In this way the consciousnesses of media consumers who are receiving these
messages are informed by them, and their frameworks for perceiving the world beyond their lived
realities - those that are provided by the media that they consume - begin to adopt these messages.
But what about in the era before September 11th, the day that, according to Vice President Dick
Cheney “changed everything” (NBC News 2003)? Were representations of terrorism different in that
time, or did they tend to follow the same trends of demonization and stereotyping? Inconveniently, this
can vary, and in no small part this is due to the ambivalent nature of the American press' relationship
with the federal government (Hallin 1989: 7). The American press has, over the years – and especially
since Watergate in 1972 – prided itself on its watchdog role to check government power and reveal
abuses. This tradition continues to the present, even in the context of the War on Terrorism, for
instance in the decision of the New York Times to publish a story revealing the Bush administration's
approval of a program to tap telephone conversations of suspected terrorists without judicial warrants
(Risen and Lichtblau 2005). However, due to a combination of factors including both a preference
within the trade to prefer official sources, as well as market-based competition for scoops and big
stories, government officials have a relatively easy time getting their comments into the media,
particularly when they are statements made by high profile figures such as the President or Secretary of
State (Hallin 1989: 71). With access to this platform, it is inevitable that the political and/or ideological
campaigns of the ruling administration will be carried out through the press to the audience.
Daniel Hallin, in his study of American media coverage of the Vietnam war, identified three
regions of press coverage that are informed by varying formula's of journalistic standards (Hallin1989:
116). The sphere of legitimate controversy, Hallin argues, is the area that journalists most often inhabit,
one in which they are free to, for the most part, pursue their understanding of objectivity, or at least
impartiality, by presenting both sides of a legitimate issue. Beside this sphere lies the sphere of
consensus, which Hallin describes as being an area containing uncontroversial social objects – a
journalist need not find an expert to declare that baseball is the national pastime - even if in other
circumstances (or other spheres) a journalist would be in breach of one of the basic precepts of his
craft, the attribution of statements of fact, if he failed to provide a quote from a recognized authority
saying so. In a sense the third sphere, the sphere of deviance, is similar to the sphere of consensus, in
that it is an area that does not expect the journalist to act as an impartial or objective observer. The
sphere of deviance contains those subjects that “the political mainstream of the society reject as
unworthy of being heard” (Hallin 1989: 117). In the context of the Vietnam War, about which Hallin
was writing, the unworthy voices were the communists. In the present War on Terror, it appears that
the unworthy voices belong to the terrorists or those who sympathize with their objectives.
Part of the difficulty stems from the nature of terrorism and the status of journalists as subjects
with multiple identities. While they are ostensibly working from a position outside of nationality –
indeed discussions of cosmopolitanism have identified foreign correspondents and other journalists as
charter members of their post-national crowd (Hannerz, quoted in Rantanen 2007: 22) – journalists
covering the War on Terror beat in the post-9/11 world have found that their nationality is very much a
reality, and that they can become victims of terror in the same way that other Americans have (Zelizer
Roger Silverstone has confronted this contradiction between operating in the sphere of deviance
while simultaneously asking the self-conscious (or perhaps naïve) Western question: why do they hate
us? To do so, he employs the concept of proper distance, which he defines as referring to “the
importance of understanding the more or less precise degree of proximity required in our mediated
inter-relationships if we are to create and sustain a sense of the other sufficient not just for reciprocity
but for a duty of care, obligation and responsibility, as well as understanding” (Silverstone 2007: 47).
As he regretfully notes, it is difficult for the media to settle on the proper distance, particularly when
they are operating in the self-interested spheres of deviance or consensus. The notion of the media
relating the other (in this case, the Islamic extremist or terrorist) to their audience by embedding itself
in a military unit or via stereotypical depictions of exotica lack the proper distance; they are too close
for comfort. Conversely, the extreme representation of Muslims or Arabs or other unfamiliar others as
terrorist villains, monsters beyond the pale of humanity similarly fails to reach that sense of reciprocity
and understanding; it is too far to see the truth. Proper distance, Silverstone argues, requires a two-
pronged effort to reach understanding, both from the producers and consumers of media, through
genuine interest to appreciate both the things that make us like them, as well as those that distinguish us
from each other (ibid). The mediapolis – Silverstone's “space of appearance” where identity and
difference are represented and understood - “extends to, and includes, both those who are represented
on screen and page, as well as those whose judgments in life increasingly depend on that
So the question becomes one of whether the zone of legitimate controversy can be enlarged to
move beyond its traditional bounds and attain a proper distance to balance a desire to understand and
appreciate the other with its tendency to look inward and pull back, drawing the contrasts with others in
sharp relief, focusing on the differences that distinguish us and them rather than the common qualities
that unite us all. In this effort, as Silverstone argues, there are responsibilities on all sides; and it should
Due to the nature of the sample of news reports, in which there were 43 articles, some of the
descriptive attributes of the articles were quite similar across publications – particularly the
newspapers. Because I was looking at front page stories, which tend to be the longest in a given edition
of a newspaper, the average length of all of the articles was just under 1,000 words (937.49). This
figure is more interesting when you consider that the average of the AP stories was significantly lower
(671). Lengthy feature stories like these tend to contain more room for comment and analysis on the
part of officials and experts that the journalist contacts to provide context. In the case of the sample, 19
of the stories (44% of the total) contained more than five quotations, with over 80% of articles
These quotations are crucial to the construction of the terrorist enemy, and while efforts to
classify quotes as either emotional or informative delivered disappoint results, it is noteworthy the
extent to which quotes from the chief executive were always unambiguous. For instance, in the case of
the East Africa bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, statements made by President Clinton that were
carried in each of the publications read: “These acts of terrorism are abhorrent. They are inhuman. We
will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice, no matter what or how long
it takes” (Gedda 1998). In the case of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, Clinton said: “If, as it now
appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act” (Deans 2000). On
September 11th President George W. Bush said in a televised address to the nation: “These acts of mass
murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed ... The search is
under way for those who are behind these evil acts” (Schmemann 2001).
Certainly it can be said that these were meant to be reassuring messages to the American
people, and the resolve in the statements to pursue those behind the acts casts attention down the road,
to substantive actions that the government will be taking in the future. But nevertheless, the choice of
language used to describe the attacks – 'inhuman', 'despicable and cowardly', 'evil' – act in a very
specific way to distance Americans – the readers – from the terrorists, and by extension the unfamiliar
others that they are associated with by their identity as Arabs and Muslims (Merskin 2005: 129).
Indeed, it is hard to cast a more direct dichotomy between the American people and those who attacked
them than to explicitly and emphatically place the terrorists beyond the pale, describing them as
The presence and prevalence of other words also provide revealing information. In more than
90% of the sample, the word 'terrorism' or a variant thereof was used – with the word appearing more
than once in more than 80% of the articles. To some degree it may not be too surprising that the word
terror appears in articles reporting terrorist attacks. However, it is precisely this introduction of the
terminology that is instructive about these articles. By describing the acts as terrorism, they become
acts of terrorism – no longer a contested issue of interpretation but a statement of fact by the institution
of journalism. It is one thing for the president, or the victims, or ordinary citizens to determine that
explosions were planned acts of violence in the pursuit of political goals, but it is another for the media,
the central tool for the construction of meaning (Silverstone 2007: 109) to immediately and deliberately
label them as such. This action sets a baseline, an area of agreement from which all the aforementioned
actors can distribute themselves across the continuum from war hawks to peaceniks, from conspiracy
theorists to armchair generals. Having moved the discussion into the realm of terrorism, a range of
options and plans are unlocked that may otherwise have been out of bounds – for instance the pledge to
bring terrorists to justice, as President Clinton said, 'no matter what or how long it takes.'
Now that we have established that these were acts of terrorism, what are we told about the
terrorists themselves? In the sample, slightly more than half (52%) of the articles mention a man named
Osama bin Laden, with about 40% of them mentioning his name more than once. Bin Laden was
prominently mentioned in many articles regarding the East Africa bombings, often including references
to his having issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, to kill Americans earlier that year. Significantly as well
for the East Africa story was the fact that bin Laden had recently been ejected from Sudan, which
borders Kenya.
It should be noted that in several cases the articles that named Osama bin Laden also contained
quotes from official sources warning readers not to jump to conclusions regarding the responsibility of
bin Laden in the East Africa embassy bombings and the USS Cole attack. This was prudent advice,
particularly in the context of these initial reports which were filed within 24 hours of the events,
however ultimately the attacks were attributed to him in the following days and weeks2. Even more
interesting, however, was the relationship between the frequency of use of the word terrorism and the
naming of Osama bin Laden in articles. In stories where the words related to terrorism were not used,
or were used only once (which constituted a combined 16.3% of the sample), there were no references
to bin Laden. In cases where those words related to terrorism were used more than once, bin Laden's
name turned up in 65% of those articles. This created a strong relationship between these acts and
terrorism, and terrorism and bin Laden in the minds of readers, who were confronted with his name
Considering the aforementioned importance that journalism ascribes to expert opinion and
analysis, it is significant to note that articles that contain more quotes from official sources also have
more references to terrorism. In some cases this is because the officials themselves are frequently using
the word, further impressing both the notion of terrorism and the authority of the officials office onto
2 Osama bin Laden was indicted later in 1998 in a United States federal court for his involvement in the bombing of the
East African embassies, and was named as a co-conspirator in an indictment against Fahd Al-Quso and Jamal
Mohammad Ahmad Ali Al-Badawi, two Yemenis who were charged with organizing the attack on the USS Cole.
the minds of readers. In 20 articles (nearly half of the total), there were both more than one reference to
terrorism and more than one, but less than five, officials quoted. In 16 of the articles (about one third of
the total), there were both more than five references to terror and more than five officials quoted.
Combined, these two categories account for over 80% of all of the articles including multiple
references to terror, often by government officials who are providing context to explain what has
The data from the sample shows that the contents of print media reports in the immediate
aftermath of terrorist attacks draw relationships between key emotive words like 'terror' or 'terrorism'
with more extensive commentary by authority figures and references to the purported terrorist leader
Osama bin Laden. Even in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, when most Americans had never
heard the name Osama bin Laden, his name was included in almost four-tenths (38%) of the very first
articles to report on the bombings. This introduction in 1998 continues to build in the reporting of the
2000 USS Cole attack where more than half of the articles name him, and by the time we reach the
September 11th, 2001 attacks bin Laden is named (with increasing certainty) in nearly six-tenths (57%)
V. Conclusion
The construction of the enemy serves a practical goal, that of moving the discussion into a field
where a set of options, not normally available, are at hand. The strongest language of all came, not
surprisingly, from those leaders who desired the ability to use those options in pursuance of their
responsibility to protect the nation. But as the analysis showed, the initial reports of the attacks in the
media played their part in putting the language of terrorism into play and setting the framework for a
forceful response 'no matter what it takes.' These first articles provide an interesting angle on existing
discourses on terrorism and Othering in the War on Terror, and illustrate the extent to which the media
was prepared to operate within both the spheres of consensus and deviance.
The study, and specifically the coding schedule employed tended to work as expected in the
analysis, however certainly some changes could be made to improve it. First of all would be a
reevaluation of the choice of including the AP in the survey. On the one hand, it is undoubtedly a
significant source of news for American across the nation. On the other hand, the AP is a prolific news
organization, and its publications accounted for fully one half of all of the articles analyzed in the
survey. Either an effort to focus on major feature stories from the AP's early coverage of the attacks, or
simply a removal of it from the sample, might be a way to improve the study in the future.
Additionally, there were some elements of the coding schedule itself that failed to provide
useful information. Notably the data point regarding the nations named in an article turned out to not
function well in the study, as the presence of the name of a nation within an article did not necessarily
mean that it played an essential part of the story (most egregious in this case came from multiple
articles on the USS Cole attack mentioning Italy in the context of Secretary of State Madeline Albright
making comments from there as a result of her being present in the country for a private vacation).
Another more fundamental question that was raised during the completion of the data analysis
was that of intentionality. Of course the goal of the analysis was never to demonstrate that the
American media intentionally set out to demonize Arabs or Muslims by associating them with Osama
bin Laden and terrorists. However, greater attention could have been paid to finding a way to square
assertions of the frequency of terms like 'terrorism' being applied in an article with the context of the
subject of the news article being a report on a terrorist attack. It is not absolutely clear to me now that
because a reporter uses the word terrorism or terrorist in an article about an attack by a political
extremist group on a sovereign nation can necessarily be taken to imply that the journalist is
unconsciously implicitly casting his lot with the administration and acting as a proxy agent for it. On
the other hand, as mentioned in the body of this study, there are very legitimate discussions on the
Ultimately, however, the lesson of this study is twofold: that the challenge of finding the proper
distance in media representations of political violence or terrorism is central to any claim by the media
to be truly providing an impartial or unbiased presentation of events and that while terrorism can in
some cases be seen as a last ditch effort by frustrated actors to bring attention to a grievance that they
feel has been ignored or marginalized (and I maintain that it is quite unfortunate that suggesting that
political violence or terrorism has motivations (even if it does not have justification) is such a taboo in
the United States and the West generally), it ultimately is a self-defeating effort to attempt to use the
media as a tool towards that redress; terrorism falls far outside the sphere of legitimate controversy,
even if human rights or the suffering of others does not necessarily. Perhaps future scholarship could
propose a more effective approach to the aggrieved to attract the attention they desire.
Appendix A: Coding Schedule
A. Article Number
1-43
B. Name of Publication
1 – New York Times : 2 – Atlanta Journal-Constitution : 3 – Seattle Post-Intelligencer : 4 – Associated
Press
C. Type of Publication
1 – National Daily Newspaper : 2 – Regional Daily Newspaper : 3 – Newswire
D. Length of Article
Range between 43 and 2729 words
TITLE: Special Report: The Embassy Bombings; Suspects: Ad hoc terrorist team; Senders of fatal
message to America and its allies were organized, well-financed, far from amateurs, experts say.
BYLINE: Ron Martz
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 04D
LENGTH: 554 words
The bombs that ripped apart U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Friday, killing dozens and
injuring hundreds, were intended to send a message not only to Americans, but also to their allies,
security experts say.
"What they (the terrorists) are saying is: 'Not only can we get the Americans, we can get you,' " said
Bob Finke, senior security consultant with IPSA International of Atlanta.
TITLE: THE WARSHIP EXPLOSION: THE OVERVIEW; BLAST KILLS SAILORS ON U.S. SHIP
IN YEMEN
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS with STEVEN LEE MYERS
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1899 words
DATELINE: ADEN, Yemen, Friday, Oct. 13
Highly coordinated and unprecedented in scale, Tuesday's attacks in the United States called to
mind the man suspected of orchestrating some of the world's worst terrorist acts: Osama bin Laden,
U.S. officials said.
No one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and the Afghan government that plays host
to bin Laden rejected speculation he was involved. One expert cautioned against assuming bin Laden
could pull off such a complex operation.
But Bush administration officials and other experts said the millionaire Saudi exile was their top
suspect.
"This apparently was well-planned over a number of years, planned by real pros and experts," Sen.
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in Washington after speaking with FBI and intelligence officials. "Their
belief is, at least initially, that this looks like Osama bin Laden's signature."
One administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities had received a fax
during the morning from unknown individuals representing themselves as being part of bin Laden's
group.
A London-based Arab journalist said Tuesday that bin Laden's followers warned his newspaper by
telephone three weeks ago of a major attack.
"They said it would be a huge and unprecedented attack but they did not specify," said Abdel-Bari
Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper.
The callers had made similar threats previously "but this time it seems his people were accurate and
meant every word they said," he said in London.
But the Taliban, Afghanistan's ruling Islamic militia, said bin Laden lacks the resources for such an
operation.
"We have tried our best in the past - and we are willing in the future - to assure the United States in
any kind of way we can that Osama is not involved in these kinds of activities," Taliban Foreign
Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil said in Kabul.
Anthony Cordesman, a terrorism expert from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies, warned against assuming bin Laden is to blame.
"There is a level of sophistication and coordination that no counterterrorism expert had ever
previously anticipated, and we don't have a group that we can immediately identify that has this kind of
capability," he said.
The United States has called bin Laden the architect of some of the worst acts of terrorism against
Americans: the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in
Africa and last year's bombing of the USS Cole.
The FBI has a $5 million bounty on bin Laden's head. The State Department calls him "one of the
most significant sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world today."
Stripped of his Saudi citizenship, bin Laden has been hiding for five years in Afghanistan under
Taliban protection.
He has repeatedly called on Muslims worldwide to join in a jihad, or holy war, and has declared
war on the United States in religious edicts faxed to the outside world. All U.S. citizens are legitimate
targets, he has said.
"I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the
Americans," bin Laden was once quoted by Al-Quds Al-Arabi as saying.
Last spring, bin Laden instructed activists attending a Muslim convention in Afghanistan to prepare
the next generation for the jihad.
"Issue a call to the young generation to get ready for the holy war and to prepare for that in
Afghanistan because jihad in this time of crisis for Muslims is an obligation of all Muslims," he said in
a statement read at the May gathering. Bin Laden's group met earlier this year with the Palestinian
group Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian al-Gamma al-Islamiya "to put in place a common strategy against
the United States," Middle East expert Antoine Sfeir noted Tuesday, citing European intelligence
sources.
But if he is involved, bin Laden and his followers probably acted alone Tuesday, Sfeir said in Paris.
"Bin Laden is the one with the financial means and the human needs and the logistic means," Sfeir
said.
Bin Laden came to prominence fighting alongside the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedeen - holy
warriors - in their war against Soviet troops in the 1980s.
But former friends and followers say he turned against the United States during the Gulf War, and
began campaigning against America from Saudi Arabia.
Disowned by his family, bin Laden - believed to be in his 40s - is said to have moved in early 1996
with a band of followers to Afghanistan, where is allegedly operates several training camps.
Earlier this summer, a federal jury in New York convicted four alleged bin Laden associates in
connection with the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, also a coordinated attack.
In retaliation for the bombings, President Clinton ordered missile strikes on bin Laden's suspected
hide-out, and Washington and the United Nations have exerted diplomacy and sanctions to get
Afghanistan to hand him over.
It refuses, saying the United States has no evidence linking bin Laden to terrorism.