EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Conversation with Terror
This interview originally appeared in TIME's January 11, 1999 issue Tall and lean, he was dressed in a traditional shalwar kameez--baggy trousers and long shirt--under a military fatigue jacket, with a scarf to fight the desert cold. An AK-47 assault rifle stood at his side. He spoke softly, in Arabic, praising God in nearly every sentence, but his voice rose whenever he criticized the United States. That he did often during the four-hour interview, his first since the U.S. tried to kill him. Osama bin Laden, the Saudi financier accused of masterminding the Aug. 7 bombings that took 224 lives at two U.S. embassies in Africa, escaped an American missile attack on his headquarters in southern Afghanistan nearly two weeks after the embassy blasts. In the months that followed, bin Laden heeded the orders of his host, the Taliban militia that controls most of Afghanistan, to avoid public statements. The Taliban's leaders evidently didn't want to complicate their budding relat...