Smiling 9/11 Hijackers Appear In Video

Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, smiles and jokes with another hijacker before the two turn serious and speak intently to a camera in a new video obtained by the British newspaper the Sunday Times.

For more than 30 minutes, the video shows Atta, who flew one of the planes that brought down New York's World Trade Center, and Ziad Jarrah, who piloted United Airlines flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field, sitting in front of a bare white wall, alternately alone and together.

The tape, according to the Sunday Times, is the only video that shows the two men together, reports CBS News foreign correspondent Richard Roth.

The British newspaper says the video was made on January 18, 2000, at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. A few days earlier, Osama Bin Laden had been addressing a group of his followers at the same training ground, reports Roth, including Ramzi Bin-Alshibh, the so-called coordinator of 9/11. Captured in 2002, Bin-Alshibh is now a prisoner a Guantanamo Bay.

The Sunday Times said it had obtained the video "through a previously tested channel" but gave no further details. It said sources from al-Qaeda and the United States had confirmed the video's authenticity on condition of anonymity.

It shows Atta and Jarrah sitting on the floor, and alternates between tight shots including only their faces and wider images which show what appears to be a gun propped up on the wall next to them. Both men have full, dark beards.

Atta wears a dark sweater or sweat shirt with a zipped-up collar and light-colored stripe pattern on the arms. He tries on a traditional Afghan cap at one point, then tosses it aside.

Jarrah is in a long white robe and wire-frame glasses, which he later removes.

"It just perhaps gives a slightly more human face to these individuals and shows how the threat is very much amongst us," Will Geddes, of the International Corporate Protection Group Ltd., told CBS's Roth.

Appearing on a number of Washington news shows Sunday, White House Counsellor Dan Bartlett reacted to a new Al Qaida video, saying it was "a chilling reminder of the type of brutal killers we are up against in this war."