Bin Laden Video Fake?

According to Robert Vamosi over at CNET, Osama Bin Laden's latest video is fake. The telltale signs lay throughout the video, from the fact that current events are never mentioned by a "live-action" Bin Laden, but are voice-overed still photos to the interesting choice of outfit (the same one worn during a recording 3 years ago).

It certainly seems plausible, but the evidence also seems a bit circumstantial.  Neal Krawetz, the gentleman who appears to have first noticed the discrepancies, points out that the video footage of Bin Laden is taken from an interlaced video source but the text and graphical portion of the screen is not.  This, along with some of his evidence of video splicing, hardly seems interesting since it could very well occur during the normal course of editing a video — not necessarily denoting an attempt at trickery.

It would be interesting to hear what the State Department has to say about this, if any of their experts care to weigh in.  Either way though, kudos to Krawetz for his detective work.  I find the art of detecting video trickery fascinating, it's like a solving an extremely subtle (sometimes) puzzle.  I am a big fan of Ghost Hunters but more often than not I find myself dissecting their evidence like… well, like a Bin laden tape

- one