(Yahoo) WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has obtained a new video of Osama bin Laden marking the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and is analyzing it, three officials said Friday.
Several intelligence agencies were looking at the video - the first new images of the terror leader in nearly three years - but no details or conclusions about its message were immediately available, the counterterror and intelligence officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
One of the officials said the government obtained the video only "very recently" and is checking to see if any specific and credible threat information can be gleaned from it.
The Homeland Security Department said Friday it had no credible information warning of an imminent threat to the United States, and analysts noted that al-Qaida tends to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary with a slew of messages.
Analysts also are trying to determine whether it is, in fact, Osama bin Laden on the tape. But one intelligence official said there has never been one of these tapes that has proven not to be authentic.
The government also is looking at bin Laden's physical characteristics - in part, for clues about his health after unconfirmed rumors earlier this year that he had died of kidney disease.
Such messages from bin Laden and other ranking al-Qaida officials offer insights, the intelligence official said.
"The most interesting thing is they are pretty clear in their intent," he said. "They often want to communicate to an American audience or a Muslim audience, a particular group or sector and they are fairly straightforward in what they say."
Soon after word emerged that the United States had the video, Islamic militant Web sites that usually carry statements from al-Qaida went down and were inaccessible. The reason for the shutdown was not immediately known.
Over the last few years, al-Qaida leaders appear to have gotten better at distributing their missives, the intelligence official said. They are using subtitles and different languages and using the Internet to distribute them, rather than depending on a particular television station or network.