Victims’ Relatives Chilled, Enraged by Video

She didn’t want her two children to watch the Osama bin Laden video--not now, just three months after their father died in the World Trade Center attacks. But Florence Foti couldn’t wait to watch the tape Thursday in a Manhattan office, and her blood boiled as she saw the terrorist leader smiling over news of the assaults that killed more than 3,300 people.

“He’s a monster,” she kept saying as the grainy video played. “I really can’t comprehend this evil, but you have to try.”

Although millions of Americans were angered and unsettled by the Bin Laden tape, Foti and other family members who lost someone in the attacks shared a special kind of anguish: They saw the infuriating smirk of the man who sent their loved ones to fiery deaths in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. They heard his words of joy and watched as one of his followers insisted that those who died at the World Trade Center were not “innocent victims” but legitimate targets in an Islamic holy war.

“It’s a hard video to watch,” said Debbie Fink, director of volunteer services at Nino’s, a lower Manhattan restaurant serving free meals to construction crews, rescue workers and others working at the World Trade Center site.

Reactions were much the same across the nation.

Father Vincent J. Inghilterra was too busy enlisting support for troops in the Afghanistan war to watch the Bin Laden videotape when it was released. But he turned on the TV as soon as he walked in the door of his one-bedroom apartment a few miles from the Pentagon on Thursday night.

Watching Bin Laden’s gleeful face sickened Inghilterra, the command chaplain at the U.S. Army Materiel Command in northern Virginia. He has counseled dozens of people touched by the attacks--widows, survivors, co-workers. He knew victims, officiated over two funerals and celebrated countless Masses to help heal a community struggling to recover.

“The laughing and the smiling. How successful we are, beyond our wildest expectations. Look at the stupid Americans,” he said. “There will be families who have problems watching this; they don’t even want to look at this man responsible for the deaths of their loved ones.”

But he said the government was right to release it, not only to provide evidence of the culpability of the accused mastermind, but because it is one more step in the long and wrenching process of recovery.

In Great Falls, Va., Stephen Push, who lost his wife, Lisa Raines, in the Pentagon attack, voiced hope that the video would remove any lingering doubts in the Islamic community about Bin Laden’s guilt. Push, who has organized a Web site for victims’ families, said the tape should also redouble American efforts to battle terrorism, no matter the cost.

“I’ve experienced a sorrow as intense as any I could imagine,” Push noted during a CNN interview. “Nothing in this tape could make it worse than it is. But I’ve been experiencing a sorrow for the human condition. I had hoped we’d put this behind us at the start of the 21st century.”

In Los Angeles, Dr. Eduardo Ornedo, a county pediatrician whose brother died aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon, was stunned watching Bin Laden’s callous, amused descriptions of the attacks.

“There were parts where they were laughing . . . discussing it matter-of-fact,” Ornedo said. “He’s smiling. He has no conscience.”

If anything, he added, the tape should strengthen American resolve.

“We have no doubt” who was behind the terror attacks, Ornedo said. “It’s like preaching to the choir. But it’s good that we can prove it. We need to convince the Muslim world that it’s one of theirs that did this.”

Some were quick to call the tape a long-overdue “smoking gun,” but added it didn’t affect their thinking on Bin Laden’s guilt or innocence.

“I didn’t have an epiphany,” said Dave Paullin, friend and supervisor of Richard Guadagno, who managed the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Eureka, Calif., and died on United Airlines Flight 93 in rural Pennsylvania. “I was one of the believers from the get-go.”

For all the certainty, though, the videotape reopened fresh wounds--just when some families were trying to take their first hesitant steps forward.

On Wednesday evening, Foti took her 12-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son to Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, for a party honoring New York City children whose parents died this year in the line of duty.

She said Robert Foti, who worked 13 years in the Fire Department, was crazy about his kids.

The Gracie Mansion party was emotionally draining, Foti said, because “we were suddenly in a room where every mother seemed to be holding a child, and they had all lost their husbands, their fathers. It was too much to take, and we left early.”

Watching the Bin Laden tape made her realize how difficult it will be to explain to her children what happened to their dad and why, Foti said.

“They could never comprehend what this maniac is saying,” she noted. “It would tear them apart to see him laughing at their father’s death.”

Times staff writers Scott Gold in Los Angeles and Faye Fiore in Washington contributed to this report.