This Day In History

Ten years ago.. My lord.

American-Born al Qaeda Calls for Attacks in U.S.

CBS- A U.S.-born spokesman for al Qaeda called for Muslims living in the United States and Europe to carry out attacks there, CBS Radio reports.

In a 48-minute video posted today on militant websites, Adam Gadahn said that it is a duty and an obligation of Muslims to defend Islam.

"It is the duty of everyone who is sincere in his desire to defend Islam and Muslims today, to take the initiative to perform the individual obligation of jihad ... by striking the Zio-Crusader interests," he said, referring to Western and Jewish interests.

Gadahn, who has been hunted by the FBI since 2004, also tried to discredit attempts by moderate Muslim leaders to suppress the "jihadi awakening."

The video was made available by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity.

Gadahn grew up on a farm in California and converted to Islam before moving to Pakistan in 1998 where he reportedly attended an al-Qaida training camp.

'Unabomber' Fights Plans to Auction His Possessions

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Convicted "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, who terrorized the country with a series of mail bombs over nearly two decades, is fighting to stop a public auction of his diaries and other personal possessions.

But Kaczynski's five-year legal battle will come to an end soon unless he can convince the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

"I regard him as the essence of evil. He's evil and amoral. He has no compassion," said Dr. Charles Epstein, who was seriously injured in 1993 when a bomb went off in a piece of mail he opened at his home. The blast destroyed both of Epstein's eardrums, and he lost parts of three of his fingers.

Epstein, 75, is a world-renowned geneticist and retired professor at the University of California at San Francisco. He is one of four victims who are owed $15 million in court-ordered restitution from Kaczynski, and he told CNN the auction was important to victims.

"Who would think that we would still be sitting, this many years later, still having dealings ... with the man who tried to kill us?" Epstein said.

Kaczynski was arrested in 1996, pleaded guilty in 1998 and is currently serving a life term in the federal "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colorado. CNN was given exclusive access to videotape the items that will be up for auction, which were seized from the Montana cabin in which Kaczynski lived for years and held in evidence by the FBI in San Francisco and Washington.

The property includes tools, typewriters, knives and a hatchet; Kaczynski's degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan; and the glasses and hooded jacket made famous by an artist's rendering of the suspect. But experts say the most valuable items probably will be the 40,000 pages of Kaczynski's diaries and other writings.

"Personally, I don't think he has any rights to anything," Epstein said. "I think he abrogated all of his rights by his behavior."

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the victims earlier this year, and now Kaczynski has until June 15 to file a notice of appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. Steve Hirsch, a California attorney who represents the four victims, said he doubts the Supreme Court would consider an appeal, and thinks the auction could happen later this year. A private company will handle the auction, but no company has yet been selected.

"The victims were placed in this terrible position of either accepting this idea of an auction with all of its problems or letting Kaczynski have all of his things back, which would have been another wound for them," Hirsch told CNN.

In handwritten legal documents, in which Kaczynski refers to himself as "K," he claims, "The District Court's orders violate K's First Amendment rights."

"The case involves the question of whether the government, consistent with the First Amendment, can confiscate an individual's personal papers and sell them at public auction to enforce payment of a debt," Kaczynski wrote in one of his numerous legal arguments.

Lawrence Brown, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said his office has no choice but to support the auction.

"This is a directive from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals," he said. "We were put in a situation where it was sort of an either-or. Either we returned all of the property back to Kaczynski, or we sought to maximize its value by holding an auction to put it back towards the $15 million that's owed in restitution."

Kaczynski, now 67, killed three people and wounded 23 others in a string of attacks from 1978 to 1995. The remainder of the victims have declined to seek restitution.

Federal agents gave the case the code name "Unabom" because universities and airlines were the early targets. Kaczynski quit a tenure-track position at the University of California-Berkeley in 1969 to build a 13-by-13 foot shack near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived without running water or electricity until his 1996 arrest.

Agents closed in after his brother noted similarities between his old letters and journals and the bomber's 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto. The New York Times and the Washington Post agreed to publish the document under a promise that the bombings would stop.

"If some funds are raised by this auction, to help out some of the victims, well, then that does help promote some level of justice," Brown said. "But you just cannot right the tremendous wrong that Kaczynski committed."

Purported Bin Laden Tape Slams U.S. Role in Pakistan

(CNN) -- Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden purportedly issued another statement Wednesday, saying U.S. policy in Pakistan has generated "new seeds of hatred and revenge against America."

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language TV network, aired segments of what it said was a "voice recording by bin Laden." This message comes as President Obama begins his trip to the Middle East, where he is visiting Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and, in Egypt on Thursday, is to make a major speech to the Muslim world.

This would be bin Laden's first assessment of an Obama policy. CNN analysis of the audiotape as it aired indicates that the voice on the tape sounds like bin Laden's.

Since the message was not posted on the usual radical Islamist Web site that carries statements from al Qaeda, it is believed that this latest message was hand-delivered to the TV network, based in Doha, Qatar.

Watch what the speaker says on the tape »

It was believed to have been recorded several weeks ago when the mass civilian exodus occurred because of fighting in northwestern Pakistan.

The message refers to the conflict in Pakistan's Swat Valley -- where Pakistani troops are taking on Taliban militants -- and it argued that Obama is proving that he is "walking the same road of his predecessors to build enmity against Muslims and increasing the number of fighters, and establishing more lasting wars."

The speaker cited strikes, destruction and Obama's "order" to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari "to prevent the people of Swat from implementing sharia law."

It was believed to have been recorded several weeks ago when the mass civilian exodus occurred because of fighting in northwestern Pakistan.

The message refers to the conflict in Pakistan's Swat Valley -- where Pakistani troops are taking on Taliban militants -- and it argued that Obama is proving that he is "walking the same road of his predecessors to build enmity against Muslims and increasing the number of fighters, and establishing more lasting wars."

The speaker cited strikes, destruction and Obama's "order" to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari "to prevent the people of Swat from implementing sharia law."

"All this led to the displacement of about a million Muslim elders, women and children from their villages and homes. They became refugees in tents after they were honored in their own homes," the message said.

"This basically means that Obama and his administration put new seeds of hatred and revenge against America. The number of these seeds is the same as the number of those victims and refugees in Swat and the tribal area in northern and southern Waziristan."

The message added: "The American people need to prepare to only gain what those seeds bring up."

In March, bin Laden also issued purported messages. He called for Somalia's new president to be overthrown and called Israel's recent offensive in Gaza a "holocaust."

Bin Laden has delivered many messages over the years, but the last video message from him was in early September 2007.

In the video message, he criticized U.S. Democrats for failing to stop the war in Iraq; spoke of the anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II; the troop surge in Iraq; and world leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

On that tape, bin Laden's appearance was artificially changed for the first time. He dyed his beard from grayish white to black, leading analysts to believe that he is only sending audio messages because he is altering his looks and doesn't want people to know what he looks like. Analysts also believe that bin Laden hasn't made videos lately because they are more labor-intensive to produce.

There have been gaps between videos from bin Laden, with many audiotapes in between, prompting analysts to theorize he might be dead. The last two videos of bin Laden himself delivering an address were the 2007 tape and another in 2004.

Al Qaeda's second in command issued an audio statement Tuesday that said Obama is not welcome in Egypt.

Ayman al-Zawahiri said relations with the United States cannot be mended so long as the administration maintains its alliance with Israel.

In a message called "Tyrants of Egypt and America's agents welcome Obama" that was posted on Islamist Web sites, al-Zawahiri once again lashed out at the United States. Obama's message to the Muslim world, he said, has already been delivered with his support for "Zionist aggression."

In the 10-minute audio message, al-Zawahiri said Obama had already made himself an enemy of Muslims by sending more soldiers to Afghanistan, ordering bombings in the tribal areas of Pakistan and administering a "bloody campaign against Muslims" in Pakistan's Swat Valley.

911 Calls Show Plane Terror

Video: 911 calls show plane terror 0:47
As a White House plane flew low over Manhattan, 911 operators fielded calls.