Bin Laden's beard baffles chief US spy

AFP
Tuesday September 11, 2007

Osama bin Laden's beard seen in a new video tape featuring the Al-Qaeda supremo has baffled the top US spy.

The traditional gray beard of the terror mastermind looked trimmed and dyed in black in the video released last week, his first of appearance since October 2004.

Questions over the elusive Saudi extremist's beard cropped up at a Congressional hearing Monday featuring top US security experts, including Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell.

"First, is this his beard?" Republican Senator Norm Coleman asked the spy chief. "Do we expect that -- is it a signal?"

McConnell swiftly rejected any possibility that the hair in his chin was intended to send any signal to his Al-Qaeda members.

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"So far, we do not think there's been a signal. He's done this periodically, as has (Ayman al-) Zawahiri (the group's second-in-command), and there has not been a correlation necessarily between one of these tapes or a public statement and a particular event," McConnell said.

But he wondered whether Bin Laden's beard was genuine.

"The big question in the community this morning, 'Is that beard real,' because as you know, just a few years ago, the last time he appeared, it was very different," he said.

"So we don't know if it's dyed and trimmed or real, but that's one of the things we're looking at. But no specific message."