What I tried to do is to present the evidence that's available and that no one has been able to refute. Not even the Arab governments who own their media have been able to denigrate bin Laden as a man.

I know these days it sounds a little odd, but American governments are very fearful of European reaction. They were afraid we would be considered gunslingers.

When you cut down to the micro-level in the West, I think we have a great deal to be worried about. And it's odd because the American leadership, again in both parties, tends to take comfort in the idea that bin Laden is just an inspirational symbol now.

And so to dismiss these homegrown terrorists as boobs, which is one of the terms that was used in one of the New York newspapers after the Miami raid, is true now, but to bet on that is I think a sure way to lose your bank account.

We haven't done anything. That has devolved into a partisan bickering of the kind that says Nero was fiddling while Rome burned.

We [Americans] continue to be harangued by politicians about how Americans must fight this war because we're being attacked because we have freedoms and liberties and women in the workplace and a whole list of ephemera that have nothing to do with this war at all.

One of the problems of not allowing the American people to read what bin Laden has said is that in October 2001 just after the war began in Afghanistan, he gave a speech that had two parts to it.