The Laughing Bombers

The videos show a pair of guys hanging out, laughing it up, and otherwise kidding around. If you didn't know any better, you could even argue that they were simply doing a really bad YouTube videocast.

The problem is that these two are likely kidding about what they were about to do. They were about to commit the worst terrorist attacks in history.

The Sunday Times has obtained a copy of the video through a previously tested channel. The tape has no soundtrack and a US source said lip readers had tried without success to decipher what was being said.

Despite the deadly tasks the men had been assigned, they appear in high spirits, laughing and smiling in front of the camera. Only when Atta, with an AK-47 propped on a wall beside him, reads a document marked in Arabic “the will”, does he become solemn. Both are well groomed, without the haggard appearance of the identity mugshots issued after September 11.

The high quality, unedited film shows Bin Laden addressing his followers at the mud-walled complex near Kandahar. One of the main figures in the September 11 plot, Ramzi Binalshibh, is identifiable in the crowd, as is a bodyguard whose task was to kill Bin Laden with two bullets to the head if he faced capture.

Dating on the tape indicates that the Al-Qaeda leader was filmed on January 8, 2000, 10 days before Atta and Jarrah recorded their wills.

American and German investigators have struggled to find evidence of Atta’s whereabouts in January 2000 after he disappeared from Hamburg. The hour-long tape places him in Afghanistan at a decisive moment in the development of the conspiracy when he was given operational command. Months later both he and Jarrah enrolled at flying schools in America.

These men in the video are Ziad Jarrah, the United Flight 93 hijacker pilot and Mohammad Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 attackers along with Ramzi Binalshibh, who coordinated the September 11 attacks. He shared an apartment in Hamburg with Mohammed Atta, and was arrested in Pakistan four years ago.

Others blogging: Blue Crab Boulevard, Secular Blasphemy, and Ed Morrissey.