# Did You Know About Osama Bin Laden Before 9-11

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-about-osama-bin-laden-before-9-11/575559>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 22, 2011, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-about-osama-bin-laden-before-9-11/575559 "2011-03-22T03:04:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2011, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-about-osama-bin-laden-before-9-11/575559/61 "2011-03-24T13:22:39Z")

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> [@Sailboat](#):
>
> Hell, I had a letter published in the Washington Post criticizing aspects of their coverage of him, specifically mentioning him by name.

> [@Erdosain](#):
>
> People, Bin Laden didn’t bomb the WTC in 1993! You had never heard his name in 1993! You never heard of him until 1998 when the embassy attacks happened.

Okay, although I’m not one of the folks claiming 1993, your post got me curious as to when I wrote that letter. I went and did a little research and found that my letter was published in October, 1998. That’s consonant with what you said.

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**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2011, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-about-osama-bin-laden-before-9-11/575559/62 "2011-03-25T01:37:52Z")

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> [@Erdosain](#):
>
> I’m not picking on the last poster, since he’s about the 80th person in this thread to post the same thing, but I don’t know which is more disturbing: that people think Bin Laden bombed the WTC in 1993 or that they don’t read threads that they post to. 😃

Thanks, you are right. I did know who he was, but I must have been mixed up. Thanks for not being terribly rude to me, either. I appreciate it.

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**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2011, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-know-about-osama-bin-laden-before-9-11/575559/63 "2011-03-25T13:39:27Z")

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I seem to recall reading his name come up in an article as someone funding the Bosnian Muslims fighting in Bosnia during the mid 1990s.

Other than that, he wasn’t really at the forefront until after the USS Cole bombing; the articles about the embassy bombings focused on Al Qaeda as a vague, shifty organization bent on blowing us all up, not on ObL in particular.

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