Rhonda Schwartz
ABC News
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
FLASHBACK: U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos
Al Qaeda has a new opening graphic for its propaganda tapes: the U.S. Capitol under "attack."
"The Islamic State of Iraq...March Toward Washington" reads the headline in English superimposed over a digitally created scene of the U.S. Capitol under attack in the introductory sequence of one tape released on the Internet this week.
Another from al Qaeda's "as Sahab" production arm announces "Holocaust of the Americans in the Land of Khorasan" and shows an image of the U.S. Capitol to introduce a short clip of al Qaeda fighters.
"This is a disturbing new trend," says Laura Mansfield, an Arabic expert who monitors jihadi videos on the Internet.
"Recall that in January 2006, Osama Bin Laden said that plans for attacks in the U.S. were in progress," Mansfield told the Blotter on ABCNews.com. "It may be that this new imagery is designed to motivate terrorist activity in the U.S., but it is certainly intended as a recruiting tool and perhaps intended to reassure al Qaeda's jihadi followers they haven't forgotten their goal of an al Qaeda attack on Washington, D.C.," she said.
