Sunday, January 22, 2006

Honest, it really is Bin Laden on this tape

When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing

By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com Monday, Feb. 1, 1999

"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.

At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.

But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.

Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun's team members. To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements. One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors."

"They chose to have him say something he would never otherwise have said," chuckled one of Papcun's colleagues.

Read the rest here

Found at What Really Happened

1 comment:

Mr. Natural said...

Good catch Rich! I don't for a SECOND believe Osama could have the incredible sense of timing that "he" has shown over the years of the bush gang in Wa dee cee! They CAN'T catch BinLaden, because he KNOWS too much!