Tape’s Effects Are Seen as Subtle on Policy, Perception

For most Americans, as well as many in Europe and around the world, watching the hourlong videotape of Osama bin Laden and his rapturous admirers will probably make them only more sure of all they thought was true.

“After all these weeks, having confronted this powerful calamity, it would be very difficult for people to veer off course and change their views,” Robert Zajonc, a Stanford University professor who specializes in the psychology of massacres, said Thursday. “Most people will use the information in the tape to confirm what they already believed.”

Yet some analysts say that, even if the tape does not immediately change minds, it could have a significant effect over the longer term, both in the Arab world and at home.

“I don’t think anyone had to have clinching evidence in the United States” or Europe, said Daniel Benjamin, a former member of the National Security Council staff. But “those who lionized Bin Laden will applaud the tape.”

The longer-term effects of the tape, if they materialize, will be more subtle.

Some experts believe, for example, that the bald nature of Bin Laden’s self-incriminating remarks may make it easier for foreign governments to cooperate with the U.S. war on terrorism, especially in areas such as money-laundering. The tapes provide ammunition other governments can use against their critics.

“Any allies who have doubts or were wavering, this gives them reason to come with us--and to convince their own people,” said Lawrence J. Korb of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

“Some people are not going to be convinced about anything. But it’s got to give pause to people who’ve been legitimately skeptical” about U.S. policy in the past. “They’ve got to say to themselves, ‘This guy is really bad news,’ ” said Korb, who served as a senior Defense Department official in the Reagan administration.

Former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana, who headed the House Committee on International Relations and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, agreed.

“This type of evidence could easily tip [foreign nations] onto the side of helping us with regard to getting financial records or investigative records, or many other things--providing overflight rights or giving us the rights to use their ports or airfields,” Hamilton said.

“I think there are a large group of countries that have been pressing the United States for additional evidence” of Bin Laden’s guilt, said Hamilton, who now directs the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are many places where this might be helpful.”

Moreover, some analysts think the words and images made public Thursday could give pause to some who share Bin Laden’s dream of humbling America and reviving Islamic power.

In this view, watching him boast of his achievements--at a time of continued U.S. military gains against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan--may make some erstwhile supporters wonder whether Bin Laden is the man for the job.

Some “may feel Bin Laden has failed to become the apocalyptic figure he’d hoped to be,” said Benjamin, now an analyst at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington. “They may ask themselves the question, ‘Is this another dead end?’ ”

Furthermore, said Barry Fulton, director of the Public Diplomacy Institute at George Washington University, even among skeptical Arab populations, the tape might sow enough doubt about Bin Laden’s innocence to make it somewhat harder for anti-American groups to win and retain followers.

“People will say, ‘Americans have all kinds of technology; they must have made this up.’ But even among those who don’t believe it, the seeds of doubt are strong enough that some of the followers will quickly fall away,” Fulton predicted.

Stanford’s Zajonc is concerned that President Bush’s frequent characterizations of Bin Laden as “the evildoer” have made it harder for most Americans to get beyond rhetoric and understand how Bin Laden ticks--and, more important, how he is able to attract followers willing to serve to the death.

He said the videotaped images of a calm, calculating leader describing the careful planning and coordination that went into the Sept. 11 attacks may help people understand that they are not dealing with an irrational monster.

Still, said Ellis Verdi, president of the New York advertising firm DeVito/Verdi, whose public policy clients have included the American Civil Liberties Union, “I think to some extent you’ll make small, very small, gains with a certain population, but the expectation should not be high.”

“There’s some small gain in seeing that, in fact, this person has somehow associated himself with the act, and in hearing him speak out of his own mouth certainly helps.

“But if your expectations are that all of a sudden we’re going to start moving massive amounts of anti-American sentiment our way, I don’t think this is going to budge it much.”