Osama bin Laden discussed the events of September 11 in a video which was recorded in November 2001: ” ‘We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all due to my experience in this field [of construction. I] was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for. …We had notification since the previous Thursday [September 6, 2001] that the event would take place that day. We had finished our work that day and had the radio on. It was 5:30 p.m. our time. Immediately, we heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. After a little while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Pages 283-284