Tapes Seen as Poison ‘Proof’

A new cache of videotapes showing the apparent training of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghan terrorist camps offers graphic confirmation of the long-held belief that Osama bin Laden’s network has experimented with chemical weapons, officials said Monday.

The 64 tapes, obtained by CNN in Afghanistan and airing through the week on the cable network, appear to show terrorist camp trainees using poison gas to kill dogs and undergoing other training in explosives and terror tactics.

CNN said the tapes were obtained by one of the network’s reporters in Afghanistan from a secret location and that they appear to represent Al Qaeda’s “video library” on terrorist tactics, dating to the late 1980s. The most recent footage shows Al Qaeda members watching television clips of the Sept. 11 attacks as they unfolded.

The tapes, believed to be the largest collection assembled on the workings of Al Qaeda, suggest that Bin Laden’s network went to great lengths to document and catalog its training methods and to pass them on to new generations of “jihad” warriors.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, with President Bush near Crawford, Texas, said the tapes are “a serious reminder of the type of enemy we’re up against.... People who use weapons to bring harm to innocents. This is a vivid illustration of what terrorism means.”

The network received only about 75 complaints concerning the video of the dogs being poisoned, CNN officials said.

CNN has already turned some of the tapes over to the State Department and the Pentagon, the officials said.

U.S. officials said intelligence and counter-terrorism experts will study the tapes to verify their authenticity and to glean any new information on Al Qaeda’s methods, but they downplayed their potential significance.

“The videotapes are proof of what we have known to be the case for some time,” said a U.S. official who asked not to be identified. “The idea that Al Qaeda was testing [chemical weapons] comes as absolutely no surprise. It’s been known for years. And what is portrayed on the videotapes, even if it’s legitimate, doesn’t mean they have the capability to inflict mass casualties on humans.”

Indeed, CIA Director George J. Tenet spoke publicly in early 2000, 18 months before the Sept. 11 attacks, of Bin Laden’s “strong interest in chemical weapons,” saying that the Saudi exile was believed to have trained his operatives in the use of toxic chemicals and biological toxins.

Intelligence officials have since learned more about Bin Laden’s interest in chemical weapons from Al Qaeda training manuals and from former Al Qaeda members such as Ahmed Ressam, the terrorist caught near Seattle in December 2000 in a foiled plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport and sentenced to 140 years in prison.

The Times disclosed in September that Ressam gave government interrogators a slew of previously undisclosed details about the tools and techniques he learned in Bin Laden’s terrorist camps, including the mixing of crude but often lethal chemical compounds that can be applied on doorknobs or through ventilation systems.

CNN said the poison used by Al Qaeda operatives to kill dogs in a videotaped experiment may be sarin, the same deadly chemical used in a 1995 attack on a Japanese subway. In addition, footage to be aired later in the week shows training in weapons, explosives, urban assassination and combat, hostage taking and other terrorist tactics, the network said.

The collection also included a documentary that was critical of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, CNN officials said. In one tape, Bin Laden appeared to refer to Hussein as a “bad Muslim,” although the context of the remark was unclear, the network said.

Such criticism, suggesting a divide between Bin Laden and Hussein, could run counter to efforts by the United States to link Hussein to Bin Laden and other terrorist groups as it considers a possible military strike.

State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said that although the department cannot yet vouch for the authenticity of the tapes, it welcomes the chance to review them. “Certainly, no one should be surprised at what the tapes purport to reflect--that is, terrorist training techniques that seem to be shown on these tapes,” Reeker said.

“Al Qaeda is well-known for its brutal terrorist tactics and has trained thousands of members to murder innocent people in a variety of ways. All of us know that all too well as we approach the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks upon our country.

“Certainly, the videotapes appear to be indicative of the lethal threat posed by the Al Qaeda network,” Reeker added. “They underscore the need for continued international cooperation to arrest Al Qaeda operatives wherever they are found, to dry up terrorist financing and to remain vigilant for possible future attacks.”

Teya Ryan, executive vice president at CNN, said the network paid “a nominal amount” for the tapes, which reporter Nic Robertson learned about from a longtime source not connected with Al Qaeda. CNN executives said the payment did not go to that source. They declined to discuss where the money went, except to say that it was not to anyone affiliated with Al Qaeda.

*

Times staff writers James Gerstanzang in Crawford, Texas, and Elizabeth Jensen in New York contributed to this report.