The vast majority of entries published by the 9/11 Timeline over the past couple of weeks concern the elusive Osama bin Laden. First, there are entries about audio recordings he has reportedly released over the last couple of years, about the Muhammad cartoons, Palestine, Palestine again, Gaza, Israel, the badness of Barack Obama, US policy, and Afghanistan.

In addition, there are new entries about an interview of him by al-Quds al-Arabi editor Abdel Bari Atwan in 1996, a look behind the scenes at how the voice on his tapes is identified, and a 2003 claim by an MIT professor that the tapes may be faked.

We have also collected some of the rumors of his death. The following have claimed he was dead: a Chinese news website (2001), former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf (2002), FBI counterterrorism manager Dale Watson (2002), Afghan President Hamid Karzai (2002), and a CIA officer who hunted him (2009). The two most interesting claims he was dead came in 2006, both shortly before a man thought to be bin Laden again released an audio recording; the claims had the effect of increasing interest in the recordings.

Finally regarding bin Laden, as US Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently commented, there has been no intelligence on him for years.

Elsewhere, there are more entries about alleged liquid bomb plot mastermind Rashid Rauf, who has been wanted in Britain for a relative's murder since the summer of 2002. Rauf later allegedly became head of al-Qaeda's European operations, but, during a joint British-US operation to thwart the liquid bomb plot, CIA official Jose Rodriguez traveled to Pakistan on Vice President Dick Cheney's orders to have Rauf arrested, throwing the British end into chaos. Terror charges against Rauf were later dropped in Pakistan.

Concerning the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks, a demolition engineer anticipated the collapses shortly after the second plane hit and there were five shocks at Ground Zero after the second tower fell. Finally, the inquiry into the destruction of CIA torture tapes was still ongoing in May.

Originally posted here.