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Was Bin Laden's last video faked?
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Mo Chen consults and participates in digital forensics research at Binghamton University in New York. He says the discussion is technically limited by the bad quality of the 2004 video and he is unwilling to support either side in the debate.
“If we only look at the videos, it's possible that 2007 video is captured from before the 2004 videos. Our problem right now is that the 2004 Bin Laden video quality is too poor. So this limits our research,” said Chen.
Chen adds that the lack of any clear “fingerprint” from a digital camera on the video is a major problem. He agrees that this may not be accidental.
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“There might be due to the technical reason, but it is true that it might be intentional— [that] they don't want people to find any trace [of the ‘fingerprint’] from the videos.”
The CIA will not say what it thinks about the possibility, but a senior U.S. intelligence official tells NBC News the U.S. believes the tape is new. He would not discuss the reasons why intelligence analysts feel that way. Another even more senior intelligence official dismissed the possibility that that beard is fake, but would not discuss the reason for the darkened beard.
Despite the debate over the most recent Bin Laden video, there is no debate among private analysts or intelligence officials about the increasing use of digital editing, in some cases sophisticated editing in the videos released by al-Qaida.
Krawetz said there is no evidence of video editing on the scale seen in the videos of his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri.
Krawetz noted in one recent video, Zawahiri was featured in what appeared to be a library, complete with a desk, a banner, a bookshelf and even a toy cannon mounted on the bookshelf.
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IntelCenter Ayman al-Zawahiri’s September 29. 2006 video |
All of it, Krawetz said, was created digitally using software like 3DStudio. Even the lettering on the banner was added separately. The software permits the creation of wire frame images that can be inserted over a green screen.
“They use multiple overlays,” said Krawetz. “I suspect they have a portable green screen or black fabric they use for the shoot, then edit the video with multiple overlays,” all of which can be seen in a forensic analysis of the video.
“You can tell the number of times it was layered and the order in which the layers were added,” Krawetz added. And a close examination can even determine whether the “green screen” has wrinkles in it. Krawetz said he has noticed the same wrinkle in several Zawahiri videos.
None of the software they use is particularly expensive, says Krawetz. The most basic software, from Adobe or Microsoft, can yield the required effects. (Evan Kohlmann, the NBC News counter terrorism analyst, says most of the software is probably pirated, that every major jihadi site has a download section filled with software from companies as big as Microsoft or Adobe.) Nor is the editing time-consuming, especially since digital editing is now so common in al-Qaida videos.
Why the subterfuge? Some of it may just be for production value… making what would be a boring background more interesting. But in the case of Bin Laden and Zawahiri, showing them in stable office-like locations has propaganda value. They’re not living in caves or even mud huts, but comfortably, in well-appointed surroundings.
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