On Tape, Bin Laden Warns of Long War

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said U.S. intelligence officials believe the tape is authentic. "The al-Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure," McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush in California. "We are continuing to take the fight to the enemy abroad and making it difficult for them to plan and plot against Americans."

Counterterrorism analysts said bin Laden was trying to portray himself as a champion of oppressed Muslims around the world, even though al-Qaeda has avoided involvement in many of the conflicts that he has decried. For example, bin Laden has largely ignored events in Sudan since he and his network were expelled from the country a decade ago. Similarly, al-Qaeda has no record of activity in the Palestinian territories.

"Bin Laden is a master craftsman at recognizing issues and knowing how to exploit these issues for his own purposes," said M.J. Gohel, a London-based analyst and chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security policy group. "He's trying to enlarge the global conflict and is trying to incite and anger the Muslim world against the West."

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist and director of the Washington office of the Rand Corp., a California-based research group, said al-Qaeda is confronting the same challenge that all terrorism networks face: how to remain relevant as a radical movement over time.

"It's entirely cynical," he said of bin Laden's rallying cry on behalf of Darfur and Hamas. "He's got to say something about someplace. They've got to keep talking or else they're going to be irrelevant, especially when they're not directly involved in the fighting."

"These are contentious contemporary issues that he can glom onto and milk for his own ends," Hoffman added. "It's more rhetorical than factual. Bin Laden is no friend of the Sudanese. They told him to leave in 1996 and took his money. And Hamas has basically told al-Qaeda to mind its own business."

Counterterrorism officials and analysts said al-Qaeda's leaders have also become more outspoken in recent months because they fear losing their influence in the fragmented world of Islamic fundamentalism. Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician, have been effectively sidelined since the Sept. 11 attacks while other radical groups and figures, such as Hamas and Jordanian fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, have stolen the limelight, the analysts said.

Zawahiri, for instance, has issued a dozen audio and video recordings in the past year, attempting, as bin Laden has, to insert al-Qaeda into a host of regional conflicts and urging Muslims to boycott elections in Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Although Zawahiri has frequently shown his face on television, bin Laden has not appeared in a video since October 2004. Terrorism analysts and Islamic fundamentalist leaders are divided as to why. Some speculated that bin Laden may have been injured or could have altered his appearance to avoid detection. Others said bin Laden fully reveals himself only on special occasions for maximum effect, such as his cameo days before the U.S. presidential election.

Despite being on the run, bin Laden and Zawahiri have both devised a reliable and secure system for distributing messages to a global audience that intelligence agencies have failed to trace.

Appearing Sunday on Fox News, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said bin Laden's most recent tape was part of al-Qaeda's "ongoing and very sophisticated communications effort" and that the terrorists realize much of today's fighting "is about winning the hearts and minds of moderate Islam, and they are focused on that."

Hoekstra said his committee was planning hearings on al-Qaeda's Internet activities shortly after Congress returns from its Easter recess. "They use the right words," Hoekstra said. "They use instantaneous response. They are quick in getting new messages up on the net."

Staff writer Walter Pincus and news researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.