I knew about him because of the first WTC attack. I’m also fairly certain that on the first page of the SDMB 9/11 thread, before we were even really sure what was going on, someone suggested that Bin Laden was responsible.
According to this other thread from the same day, it appears fingers were pretty quickly pointed at bin Laden.
Yes I did.
You’re right. I probably misremembered his name in connection with the 1993 attack. But I did know of him before 2000 as being a notorious terrorist leader and suspected him right from the outset on 9/11.
I was in high school and I don’t believe I knew him.
Yes, from the other terrorist attacks (USS Cole, first World Trade Center attack, etc.). When the planes crashed into the towers, I figured it was bin Laden behind it.
No. I really find that most of the stuff going on out there isn’t relevant to kids. I don’t think there’s any point in raising kids to be scared of things they can’t control.
Honestly, while it was a great tragedy, even knowing about 9/11 has not really affected my life in any significant way. There was nothing I could do about it.
Yeah, anyone who followed current events had heard of him in connection with various things for years. Hell, I had a letter published in the Washington Post criticizing aspects of their coverage of him, specifically mentioning him by name.
Regarding the idea that his name wasn’t linked to the 9/11 attacks until years later, well…his name was discussed on the national news coverage the morning of the 9/11 attacks. It was purely speculation at that point, of course.
I know I knew of him well before the African-embassy attacks in 1998 and am pretty sure I read about him in conjunction with WTC 93. I do se a connection in bin Laden’s Wikipedia entry:
“Shortly after Saudi Arabia permitted U.S. troops on Saudi soil, bin Laden turned his attention to attacks on the west. On November 8, 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed, discovering a great deal of evidence of terrorist plots, including plans to blow up New York City skyscrapers, marking the earliest uncovering of al Qaeda plans for such activities outside of Muslim countries. Nosair was eventually convicted in connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990.”
I wasn’t aware enough of bin Laden to have thought of his name between hearing of the September 11th attacks and hearing that he was the main suspect, but I was aware enough of his existence that when I heard his name later that day I thought something along the lines of oh ghod not him again.
Yes, definitely. As I was listening to the second plane hit on a radio broadcast my first thought was “no accident, terrorists” and my second thought was “it’s f&%!ing bin Laden again.”
no, i didn’t know. i was 20 when 9/11 happened and not aware of much that didn’t affect me directly.
i learned pretty quickly after.
Interestingly enough, bin Laden isn’t even mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the first World Trade Center bombing. Like a poster above, I think that most people are conflating Sheik Omar with Osama bin Laden in regards to contemporaneous accounts of the first bombing. So far as I recall, it wasn’t until 1995-1996 that bin Laden really entered the public conscious, with issuing fatwas against the West in interviews to journalists.
It has made us more conscious of terrorism. Since 9-11 there have been no terrorist attacks in the style of WTC I or OKC in the US-only shootings by the nutty.
I’d heard of him, yes. After the attacks were blamed on Al Qaeda I realized I’d seen a Fox News report about Bin Laden a few months or a year earlier. I didn’t know very much about him, and I didn’t know enough to assume he was involved in the September 11th attacks, but I knew he existed.
I thought he was pretty famous, actually. I had no idea people did not know who he was, especially after the bombing in 1993.
So, yes, I knew who he was. I didn’t actually expect anything like a 9/11, but I knew he wanted to “do terrorism” to the US.
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. 
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. Sure, he helped fund the first WTC bombing, in a round about way, but that didn’t come out until years later.
From the New York Times:
Sheesh!
I honestly can’t remember when I first became aware of Bin Laden. It might have been on 9/11 or I might have heard of him before then.
Thank you for that. I’m not going crazy. Well, at least not evidenced by this particular point.
No, I think I barely knew anything about the middle east except where it is on a map.