WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) US Intelligence experts say a videotape of Osama bin Laden could contain an embedded coded message to followers to activate a pre-planned attack against Americans.
One USoOfficial has said bombing plots against four US Embassies had already been disrupted.
The US government was jittery over the video, aired on Sunday after the United States began strikes on Afghanistan, and the White House took the extraordinary step of asking television networks to curb broadcasts of messages from bin Laden and his followers.
One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, authorities had foiled bombing plots aimed at four USembassies.
The official declined to identify the locations of the embassies or the plotters.
The United States has blamed bin Laden and his group Al Qaeda of orchestrating the hijacked-aircraft attacks last month that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon near Washington.
The USis conducting daily strikes on Afghanistan aimed at extremist training camps and military positions of Taliban rulers, who sheltered bin Laden and refused to hand him over.
Shortly after the strikes began on Sunday during the night in Afghanistan, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television aired the videotape showing bin Laden in the daylight against a rocky backdrop, saying: "I swear to god that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Mohammad, peace be upon him." Intelligence experts took note that he was wearing an American-style camouflage jacket and clearly showing off a big wristwatch as he calmly spoke into a handheld microphone.
The tape was probably prepackaged and waiting to be delivered to the television station when the bombing started, and USIntelligence agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency were poring over it to see whether it contained any possible signals to followers, experts said.
Even just the appearance of the videotape on the first day of the bombing could be some type of signal, experts said.
"It was basically a finger in your eye sort of message to the US, that he will be back," said Stanley Bedlington, a former CIA Counter terrorism analyst.
The Camouflage jacket was an insult to the US military, and flashing a big wristwatch showed "that he is not just a guy who has been dropped from a tree or lived in a cave, that he is modern, up-to-date," Bedlington said.
Bin ladens speech could have included a coded message to followers that had been worked out beforehand through the way he strung words together, he said.
But the overt remarks themselves said Americans can expect some retaliation, Bedlington said.
"I think were in for another attack," he said.
Martin Indyk, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and Former US ambassador to Israel, told Reuters that broadcasting bin Ladens messages to the muslim world could ultimately mean danger for Americans.
"He has a potential to mobilize other extremists to go out and try to kill Americans," Indyk said.
"In that sense it is dangerous, yes." "The danger lies in the broadcasting of this to the Islamic world through Al-Jazeera.
Its far more dangerous than our press publishing it.
That is the audience that he is aiming at," INDYK said.
Regardless of whether the videotape contained any coded messages, the overt speech was a clear "call to arms," INDYK said.
"He is basically telling people who are amenable to his message this is a jihad (holy war)."