Do grainy photos show that former President George W. Bush and other key Department of Defense staff met with Osama bin Laden before the September 11, 2001, attacks? No, that's not true: These photos, which were taken the day after the attacks, have been altered. High-quality photos taken at a meeting held inside the Pentagon show Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, not bin Laden, seated at the table next to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
One altered image appeared in a post on X (formerly Twitter) by @MattWallace888 on January 21, 2024, (archived here) that was captioned:
A picture of George Bush meeting with Osama bin Laden before 9/11 has been going viral. The CIA says this picture is fake.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
A reverse image search with Google Lens (archived here) showed a wider view of the altered image that appeared in a January 15, 2022, article (archived here) on a French-language conspiracy website qactus.fr. The altered image was also posted (archived here) in the Facebook group Pilots For 911 Truth on January 25, 2022. It resurfaced on X (archived here) on January 8, 2024, posted by the Swiss French-language X account Média Libre Investigation, with the same cropping and black top border (pictured below left) as was present in the qactus.fr copy of the image. At the same time on January 8, 2024, Média Libre Investigation posted a second altered image (archived here) with bin Laden's face edited into the scene (pictured below right). This opened another path to reverse image search.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X screenshots taken on Mon Jan 22 19:02:45 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories did a reverse image search with Google Lens for the altered image pictured above left (archived here). In the results was the unaltered original image on the website Rotten Tomatoes. This image was credited to the U.S. Department of Defense and Sony Pictures, as the photo had appeared in the movie "Why We Fight." Another Google Lens search for the Rotten Tomatoes image (archived here) brought up results from the Department of Defense (here) and Wikimedia (here). This image was part of a Wikimedia collection titled, "Category:George W. Bush at the Pentagon (12 September 2001)" (detail pictured below). Among the images is a second photo angle of the meeting (pictured below far left), which was posted in its altered state on X by Média Libre Investigation (as seen above right).
(Source: Wikimedia.org screenshot taken on Mon Jan 22 22:14:40 2024 UTC)
In the altered photos, it is Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz whose head was replaced with bin Laden's. The Wikimedia caption for the photo (second from left above) reads:
Arlington, Va. (Sep. 12, 2001) -- Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (left) introduces staff members to President George W. Bush at their Pentagon meeting. Counterclockwise from Rumsfeld is Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, Secretary of the Air Force James Roche, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry H. Shelton, USA, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Bush inspected the site of the terrorist attack on the building and thanked the men and women who assisted in containing the fires and rescuing victims. DoD photo by Helene C. Stikkel. (RELEASED)
A reverse image search for the second altered image with Yandex.com (archived here) turned up a copy of this image minus the red circles, bringing the earliest known appearance of these altered images back in time considerably. On October 3, 2010, the user @favito5775 posted both altered images (archived here) on a Chilean forum board called Portalnet.cl.with the caption, translated from Spanish by Google:
VERY OLD ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTIONS AND CITIES ON THE PLANET MARS AND ON THE MOON.TRUE OR FALSE. THE FOUR PLANES THAT SUPPOSEDLY CRASHED IN NORTH AMERICA ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, IN THE TERRORIST ATTACK IN NEW YORK ARE ON THE PLANET MARS WITH OTHER SUBMARINE SHIPS AND PERSONNEL MISSING THROUGHOUT HISTORY IN THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE.
These 2010 copies are not as blurry as later reposts, and it was possible to identify the image of bin Laden that was used to alter the second image from the Pentagon meeting. This photo is one of the most iconic images of bin Laden. The photo's caption on Getty Images reads:
AFGHANISTAN - MAY 26, 1998: (FILE PHOTO) Suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden addresses a news conference May 26, 1998 in Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Budget Committee February 11, 2003 that he had read a transcript from bin Laden or someone believed to be him, speaking about his partnership with Iraq from an Al Jazeera tape. The Arab satellite station aired a statement allegedly from Osama bin Laden.
The composite image below shows a detail from the original image of Wolfowitz at the September 12, 2001, meeting and the image of bin Laden that was used to alter the photo. Lead Stories was unable to locate the source image showing bin Laden from the side view that was used to alter the other photo of the September 12, 2001, meeting.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with wikimedia, blogspot and yandex.com screenshots taken on Mon Jan 22 20:56:49 2024 UTC)
