Did Alex Jones warn of an attack on the United States by Osama Bin Laden in July of 2001?

Question

I was listening to a podcast by Jordan Klepper in which a conspiracy theory researcher is interviewed, and explains that Alex Jones was responsible for a lot of the 9/11 conspiracy theories as he reported on Infowars in July 2001 that the US was under threat of a terrorist attack, which supposedly would be attributed to Osama Bin Laden (reference to the moment in the podcast: https://pca.st/episode/da8e6dd0-1209-458b-a417-13774cab2f93?t=447.0).

On July 25th he had a show in which he said:

we know a terrorist attack is going to happen, we know bin Laden is going to be involved, they're going to be blaming it on him.

And that the White House was thus preparing martial law. There is an audio clip from Jones reproduced in the show for this last bit.

The source being an entertainment podcast does not have a lot of legitimacy, however I find multiple articles online mentioning this factoid, from sources that whereas not authoritative (slate for instance) would typically be hostile to Alex Jones.

So two questions emerge:

1. Did Alex Jones truly talk in infowars in July of 2001 of the possibility of a terrorist attack whilst mentioning specifically the name of Osama Bin Laden? This claim sounds ridiculous to me.
2. If he did not, how did this myth start? I’m surprised that this is conveyed by democrat-leaning sources.

Answer 1

That isn't the only source of that claim and from what I can see Alex Jones has been doing conspiracy theories before September 11th.

Where Did 9/11 Conspiracies Come From?

On July, 25 2001 he had a two and a half hour program in which he made many claims of false flag attacks from the 1993 World Trade Center attack to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. During this show he also says that the government "needs" Bin Laden as a boogeyman for their goals.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories predate 9/11. On July 25, 2001, in a two-and-a-half-hour broadcast of his Infowars TV program on a local public-access channel, Alex Jones laid out what he saw as the history of government-manufactured false-flag attacks, from the Gulf of Tonkin incident that Lyndon Johnson used to draw the United States deeper into the Vietnam War to the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which Jones claimed was government-manufactured terrorism orchestrated to help Bill Clinton boost his poll numbers and suppress civil liberties. As he compared Oklahoma City to the Reichstag fire, Jones flashed the numbers for the congressional and White House switchboards onscreen. "Call the White House and tell them we know the government is planning terrorism," he said. " 'Bin Laden' "—he used air quotes—"is the boogeyman they need in this Orwellian phony system."

After the attacks he goes on the air to claim that the Bush administration took part in a staged terrorist attack.

Six weeks later, on the day the Twin Towers fell, Jones began his broadcast by declaring that, as he had predicted, the Bush administration had taken part in a staged terror attack. "I'll tell you the bottom line," Jones said. "98 percent chance this was a government-orchestrated controlled bombing."

Answer 2

https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1673640496587997184?lang=en-GB

In response to @Abel and others' skepticism as to whether Alex Jones mentioned Osama Bin Laden when warning of a government orchestrated terrorist attack I found a clip on twitter from his Infowars podcast, which confirms that he did.

Answer 3

Balance, the claim really isn't bold.

I feel the other answer is correct but fails to provide balance to the claim,

Did Alex Jones truly talk in infowars in July of 2001 of the possibility of a terrorist attack whilst mentioning specifically the name of Osama Bin Laden? This claim sounds ridiculous to me.

In July of 2001, Osama bin Laden was a well known name: he had already issued a fatwa and declared war on the USA, bombed an embassy, and bombed the World Trade Center. Moreover, there were only two conclusions involving bin Laden,

• If he didn't die he would commit future attacks against civilians
• But, he may die before that from assassination or otherwise

From ABC news this is what Bill Clinton had to say about Osama bin Laden

“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden ... He’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton said in the audio, which was recorded by former Liberal Party head Michael Kroger and aired by Sky News. “I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.

So they were already actively monitoring Osama bin Laden and judging whether the time was right to assassinate him. Let's look at Alex Jones's prediction from above,

"Call the White House and tell them we know the government is planning terrorism," he said. " 'Bin Laden' "—he used air quotes—"is the boogeyman they need in this Orwellian phony system."

In light of this, does it sound so ridiculous that someone would predict another attack by Osama bin Laden? It seemed more likely then not in the eyes of the state department and former president. If the axiom above is correct, all Jones then did was predict, rightly

• Osama bin Laden wouldn't die before another attack occurred which would be attributed to him.

That's not a bold prediction at all. Bin Laden didn't die until 2011, and even then it wasn't from natural causes, so it seems very likely he could have pulled off another attack in the decade after Jones's statement.

We still have no reason to believe the planning of 9/11 was done by anyone but Osama. So this part of Alex Jones's prediction is a bit silly. The whole false-flag notion of it is entirely tangential and unsubstantiated even with all the information we have today, but to ask the question explicitly if it's totally reasonable to predict another attack by Osama bin Laden is it at all surprising that someone conspiratorially inclined would predict that the root underlying cause wasn't what others believed but was smoke and mirrors for the New World Order wanting to increase their control on society?

---

While there is no evidence that the government orchestrated 9/11. There is at least some evidence that they allowed it to happen. They were busted having a memo named "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" which was given to President George W. Bush on August 6, 2011. It specifically mentioned hijacked planes. The memo existence was leaked in 2002, the same year that the government created the Department of Homeland Security and blamed 9/11 on miscommunication between bureaucracies. The memo wasn't declassified and published until 2004 when the Department of Homeland Security was already sold as a solution to the problem, and had existed for two years. No one has answered how the Department of Homeland Security will be more efficient at getting a direct warning of terrorist attack to the president then the past mechanism which did so successfully 36 days in advance of the attack.

Moreover, and more fishy, the most consequential event to come from 9/11 was the Invasion of Iraq, which was likely planned before 9/11. This claim was mirrored by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill

From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go, [...] For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap. [...] It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'

I bring this up only to say there is plenty of room for Osama bin Laden to be the perpetrator and for our government to use the attack to perpetuate an "Orwellian phony system".