"There must be some justification for the tremendous spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on the Defense Department and other agencies," he said.

CAIRO – America's number one public enemy continues to haunt the Bush administration with his audiotapes, this time refuting claims that Zacarias Moussaoui or detainees in the notorious Guantanamo detention camp had links to the 9/11 attacks.

"I am responsible for assigning the roles of the 19 brothers to conduct these conquests and I did not order Zacarias to be with those on this mission," Osama bin Laden said in an audio recording posted on the internet.

"His confession that he was assigned to participate in those raids is a false confession," added the speaker.

"No intelligent person doubts (the confession) is a result of the pressure put upon him for the past four and a half years."

A US official said they had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the recording. Washington had authenticated all recent tapes by bin Laden.

In a new stinging defeat for the Bush administration, a federal jury on Wednesday, May 3, spared Moussaoui, the only person convicted for the 9/11 attacks, the death sentence and slapped him with a life sentence.

After seven days of deliberations, the jury of nine men and three women did not find Moussaoui's actions resulted in the deaths of about 3,000 people on 9/11, a central part of the government's demand for the death penalty.

Three of the 12 jurors found that the role of Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, in the 9/11 operation, if any, was minor.

Two Groups

Bin Laden said the 9/11 attackers were split in two groups: pilots and support teams to control the hijacked planes.

Moussaoui was learning how to fly so he could not have been the so-called 20th hijacker supposed to help control the airplanes as Washington had claimed, he noted.

"And if Moussaoui was studying aviation to become a pilot of one of the planes, then let him tell us the names of those assigned to help him control the plane.

"But he won't be able to tell us their names, for a simple reason: that in fact they don't exist."

The speaker recalled that Moussaoui had been arrested two weeks before the attacks.

"If he had known something — even very little — about the Sept. 11 group, we would have informed the leader of the operation, Mohammad Atta, and the others ... to leave America before being discovered," Bin Laden said.

Moussaoui had pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy over the Al-Qaeda attacks using hijacked planes.

He told the court he would have piloted a fifth airplane into the White House – a contradiction of his earlier claims he was meant to be part of a second wave of attacks.

Moussaoui later tried in vain to withdraw his guilty plea.

No Links

Bin Laden also said that the hundreds of detainees held by the US at Guantanamo have no links with the 9/11.

"Our brothers in Guantanamo ... have no connection whatsoever to the events of Sept. 11."

He stressed that they were not even Al-Qaeda sympathizers.

"Many of them have no connection with Al-Qaeda in the first place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose Al-Qaeda's methodology of calling for war with America."

Bin Laden said the Bush administration was well aware of this fact but they avoid mentioning it for reasons.

"There must be some justification for the tremendous spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on the Defense Department and other agencies," he said.

He did indicate that two suspects had links to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

"All the prisoners to date have no connection to the Sept. 11 events or knew anything about them, except for two of the brothers," he said without naming or elaborating.

Bin Laden also cleared two journalists and a relief worker of links to his network, saying they had no such ties.

Sami al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantanamo.

Tayssir Alouni, an Al-Jazeera correspondent, was convicted by a Spanish court of collaborating with Al-Qaeda, a charge he vehemently denies.

Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi, the founder of an Afghan charity, is accused by the US of supporting terror.

If authentic, this would be third tape by bin Laden this year.

In a tape aired on Arab television in April, he denounced the US and Europe for cutting off funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, accusing them of leading a "Zionist" war on Islam.

In January, he offered the American people a truce. The message was his first in over a year, his longest period of silence since the 9/11 attacks.