In an apparent shipping mishap, Osama bin Laden sent a mix tape intended for LaCucaracha head cheerleader, Tiffany O’Keefe, to the Al-Jazeera network for worldwide broadcast instead. In a note attached to the chromium dioxide (CrO2) Maxell XLIIS cassette tape, bin Laden explained that he became smitten with the Armadillos senior after seeing her image on a CNN report about fundraising for the victims of the recent Haiti earthquake. As all LaCucaracha residents know, O’Keefe was featured in the CNN report for her efforts on behalf of her church, St. Earl Campbell Catholic Church. The 90-minute tape also came with bin Laden’s hand-written liner notes about each tune contained on said tape.
The tape contains quite an array of songs, spanning The Who and Roxy Music to The Killers and 3Oh!3. In bin Laden’s tiny, barely legible script he explains in his notes that the Roxy Music classic, “Love Is The Drug,” explains his feelings about O’Keefe better than any sonnet Shakespeare ever came up with. At one point he uses The Killer’s “Read My Mind” to compare his current lodgings (presumably a cave) to the “two-star town” he assumes O’Keefe’s LaCucaracha to be. The tape’s song choices are not totally secular. For example, to express his misgivings about O’Keefe’s possible purity, he uses the 3Oh!3 song, “Don’t Trust Me,” to inquire if O’Keefe is a whore because, as the song says, one must “never trust a ho.” Of interest to the CIA, FBI and Department of Homeland Security was the inclusion of The Who’s “How Many Friends.” In his notes, bin Laden laments that he often wonders how many friends he really has. He explains that trust is hard to come by and his paranoia grows daily. In typical fashion, the tape closes with The Police classic, “Every Breath You Take,” which, bin Laden writes, “should be self-explanatory.”
It is unclear if the use of a cassette tape shows that bin Laden is “old school” or if CD or DVD-ROM drives are just hard to come by in the mountainous region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
As for the actual tape intended for Al-Jazeera, it was indeed received by O’Keefe. When contacted by the Texas Cockroach, O’Keefe stated that, yes, she did receive a package. “It was written in some weird language,” said O’Keefe, “and had this little tape that, like, my parents have a lot of. The machine that plays it hasn’t worked in forever so I just threw it away.”
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