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Author discusses al Qaeda tape
by Sharyn Wizda Vane
2002-05-23 The Austin American-Statesman

Austin writer Lawrence Wright penned the definitive profile of Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, in the New Yorker last year and is researching a comprehensive book on terrorism and counterterrorism. With America under another terror alert and with the release of a tape, allegedly from al-Zawahri, that calls for yet more attacks, we talked with Wright Thursday about his impressions.

Austin American-Statesman: Many people seem confused about why this tape is supposedly coming from al-Zawahri and not bin Laden. Yet al-Zawahri is one of the top figures in al Qaeda. Why hasn't he captured the attention that bin Laden has?

Lawrence Wright: He doesn't have near the charisma that bin Laden does, and he knows it. He's always been a behind-the-scenes figure. Bin Laden had to convince him to use his real name. He always liked to remain in the shadows. He has made statements in the past, but this one sounds as if he's taken control. I don't know that that's true, but he seems to be clearly issuing orders now. He didn't seem to have that authority before.

Understanding that we can't know for sure, do you think that means that Osama bin Laden is dead or otherwise out of commission?

He could be out of commission, he could be dead, or not. It could be simply that bin Laden's in a place where he can't get a message out, and al-Zawahri is. They have been together, and they've left together, we know that, but they may not still be together. So it could be that al-Zawahri is operating the remnants of al Qaeda and bin Laden is either unable or not in a position to get the word out.

Do you think the tape is (al-Zawahri)?

I talked (Thursday) to people who know him, some of the jihadis in London, and they think it's him. And the FBI told me that they think it's al-Zawahri. The language is the same language that he's been using since 1996.

There's been some discussion that even though he mentions Norway as one of the countries that needs to be on alert, he really meant Denmark, which has been part of the coalition (against the war in Iraq).

I think al-Zawahri's not that stupid. If he said Norway, either he meant Norway or Norway means something else.

But there's no way to know what that would be?

Right.

Was there anything else surprising in the parts of the tape you've heard?

What I'm a little concerned about is that one of my sources at the FBI says the Al-Jazeera reporter had it for a week before the FBI got it. If that's true, that's very upsetting. It's clearly a direct threat that should have been made accessible a week ago. (Al-Jazeera broadcast the tape on Wednesday.) The other thing is that the tape makes no reference to the Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) bombng or the Morocco bombing, so the tape could be old, it could date from the beginning of the Iraq war.

Despite Sept. 11, many Americans still don't feel that terrorism is going to be a regular part of their lives. Why do you think that is?

There are a lot of reasons. We historically are so isolated that we felt protected by that, from our distance from the rest of the world, even though the rest of the world was growing smaller. Perhaps most mysteriously, we were hit in '93 when the World Trade Center was bombed, but you know we convinced ourselves that this was a single event and could not happen again. I think also we as Americans were in this cocoon of smugness that allowed us to say to ourselves that everybody loved us and everybody wanted to be an American. That's the big shock of Sept. 11, that not everybody did love us and there were a lot of people in the world that had a case against us.

What can you tell us about your forthcoming book on terrorism?

The book really began on Sept. 11, when I started doing some reporting for the New Yorker, for the famous black (cover) issue that came out the week after Sept. 11. I knew I wanted to write something about it in order to understand it.

For one thing I had lived in Cairo for two years and taught at the American university in Cairo, so I really had a great fondness for that part of the world. It's sickening to think that the culture I had such a connection to was so at odds with us. Also I had written this movie, "The Siege," which was in retrospect so premonitory of these events, more to me than anyone else.

So I set out to try to understand these events. I began by looking at obituaries online; they were streaming in online in the week after and I think it was a Washington Post online obit of John O'Neill that caught my eye. He was the head of the New York bureau of the FBI's counterterrorism force and I decided that, interestingly, the obit made him sound like something of a disgrace, that he had resigned because of some leaked material that ruined his career. He had taken a job as head of security of the World Trade Center, and he'd paid the ultimate price. As it turned out he was the chief Osama bin Laden hunter of the FBI. So instead of getting bin Laden, Osama bin Laden got him.

When you're a writer, in telling a vast story like this you're always looking for characters to tell the story for you, to carry this information to the reader. The reader is naturally captivated by vivid, dramatic lives. He was the first character that I decided to write about, and that portion of his life came out in the New Yorker.

Then right after that came out I was very impatient to get to Egypt. I had this idea that nobody was looking at Egypt except for Mohammed Atta. I had this sense that the thinking and the leadership must have come from Egypt, because it always has. Egypt is the intellectual leader of the region and always has been . . . I also wanted to see what the linkup was with al-Zawahri. The link turned out to be an unbelievable link. (Wright's profile of al-Zawahri appeared in the New Yorker in September 2002).

The shape of the book now is that it's about the terrorists and the counterterrorist. So I just got back from Saudi Arabia (he left before last week's bombing of residential compounds); I've been there for three months, researching bin Laden and the hijackers and talking to members of the Saudi intelligence commnity, which is a side of the story that's very interesting. Then this fall I'll go back to the Middle East, go back to Yemen and Sudan and Pakistan, because all of those places figure so prominently, I don't want to write about them without visiting. . . .

What did you find on your trip to Saudi Arabia?

Well, Texas and Saudi Arabia have a lot in common — oil came in and was very transformative of both of our cultures. Also I think there's a commonality in terms of our reputation, which has not always been that great, in terms of being full of ourselves.

But what I found is that this is a culture that's really been shattered and is in very much of a struggle to find itself right now.