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Osama tape is genuine: U.S.

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington Nov. 19. After days of not addressing the issue directly, the Bush administration has finally determined that the audiotape that surfaced recently and which was said to contain the voice of the terrorist mastermind, Osama bin Laden, was indeed authentic.

But even now media reports are quoting only an unnamed administration official as saying, among other things, that there was no evidence of the audiotape being doctored.

"Although it cannot be stated with 100 per cent certainty, it is the intelligence community's assessment that the tape is genuine...We may never get anymore certain than we are today," the official has been quoted as saying.

At the White House, the spokesman, Scott McClellan, talked about the significance of the re-emergence of Osama. "It is a reminder that we are at war on terrorism. It is a reminder that we need to continue doing everything we can to go after these terrorist networks and their leaders wherever they are, and we will," he said.

Intelligence agencies here maintain that Osama is perhaps holed up in a highly-secure area in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

They are trying to discount a view that has surfaced in Britain that the Saudi fugitive may have fled to Yemen and was being taken care of by his tribe. The surfacing of the tape came as an embarrassment of sorts to the Republican administration, which was saying all along that it was not sure if the Saudi national was dead or alive. The President, George Bush's refrain has been, "If he's alive, we'll get him; if he's dead, we got him."

Meanwhile, in what is considered a major legal victory for the administration and the Justice Department, a special Appeals Court has expanded the authority of the Government on wiretaps and other forms of surveillance relating to terrorism for subjects in the country.

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