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Excerpts from bin Laden tape

December 13, 2001 Posted: 12:04 p.m. EST (1704 GMT)

(CNN) -- The Bush administration on Thursday released a videotape of Osama bin Laden that U.S. officials say makes clear he had advance knowledge about the planning and details of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Here are excerpts of bin Laden from the tape, translated into English by four translators hired by the U.S. government:

"We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all (inaudible) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for."

"We were at (inaudible) when the event took place. We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day. We had finished our work that day and had the radio on. It was 5:30 p.m. our time. I was sitting with Dr. Ahmad Abu-al-(Khair). Immediately, we heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We turned the radio station to the news from Washington. The news continued and no mention of the attack until the end. At the end of the newscast, they reported that a plane just hit the World Trade Center.... After a little while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it."

"The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America, but they didn't know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes."

* "These young men (inaudible) said in deeds, in New York and Washington, speeches that overshadowed all other speeches made everywhere else in the world."

* "Those who were trained to fly didn't know the others. One group of people did not know the other group."