Mr. Mir, the only reporter to interview bin Laden in the wake of 9/11, said that the text of bin Laden’s address may have been redacted by government sources since a significant portion of it was not aired by major American news outlets.

In the unaltered message, according to Mr. Mir, bin Laden says: “We must sacrifice our lives to attack the enemy.” This statement, Mr. Mir points out, is a call for suicide attacks to take place throughout the United States – a call that was erased from official transcripts of the videotape.

These suicide attacks, Mr. Mir believes, may involve the use of radiological devices and/or tactical nuclear weapons.

Mr. Mir said that he had been informed by leaders of the Taliban in Afghanistan that al Qaeda’s long-planned American Hiroshima – a nuclear attack on seven to ten U.S. cities – will occur in 2008 but could come sooner.

In June, ABC News reported that large teams of al Qaeda suicide bombers had been sent to the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Germany to launch attacks at strategic sites. The report contained videos of hundreds of recruits for these missions at a graduation ceremony in Pakistan. Some of the recruits were as young as 12.

In August, four Islamic terrorists were arrested in Germany for planning to strike German airports and US bases in commemoration of the sixth anniversary of 9/11. It is important to note that those arrested were blonde, German born converts, whose appearance allowed them to operate “under the radar” of traditional profiling techniques and counter-terrorism protocols.

Mr. Mir has long sounded the alarm of al Qaeda’s plan to launch an American Hiroshima.

"As far as I know, they smuggled three suitcase nukes from Russia to Europe,” Mr. Mir maintained last year. “They smuggled many kilos of enriched uranium inside America for their dirty bomb projects. They said in 1999 that they must have material for more than six dirty bombs in America. They tested at least one dirty bomb in the Kunar province of Afghanistan in 2000. They have planned an attack bigger than 9/11, even before the attacks on the World Trade Center took place. Osama bin Laden trained 42 fighters to destroy the American economy and military might. Nineteen were used on 9-11, 23 are still 'sleeping' inside America waiting for a call from bin Laden."

Mr. Mir said al-Qaeda operatives told him that tactical nuclear weapons were smuggled over the Mexican border before Sept. 11, 2001.

Asked why al-Qaeda hasn't used nuclear weapons it already possesses, Mir said: "They are waiting for the proper time. They want the U.S. to be involved in a mass killing of Muslims, so that they will have some justification. That is what I was told by a top al-Qaeda leader in the Kunar Mountains of Afghanistan."

Mr. Mir, whose biography of bin Laden is expected to appear before Christmas, says that the al Qaeda chieftain is no longer in Pakistan but has relocated to a remote mountainous area within the Khost and Paktia provinces of eastern Afghanistan.

These and ten other Afghani provinces, Mir maintains, are now under the rule of the Taliban.

The pipeline for jihadi supply troops, he insists, now runs from the United Arab Emirates through Iran and into southern Afghanistan.

The Iranian-Taliban alliance is a new, unique and disturbing development in the War on Terror. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, Mullah Omar and his army were decried by the Shiite mullahs in Iran for the massacre of thousands of Shiite Hazaras and Panjshiri Tajiks. Iran began to send money and arms to Ahmed Shah Massoud and his opposition army of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras that became known as the "United Front" or "Northern Alliance." The Russians also came to the support Massoud's army to protect the interests of Uzbekistan.

The Northern Alliance continued to receive support from Iran and Russia until the launching of Operation Enduring Freedom (the codename for the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan) Oct. 7, 2001. Overnight, the Iranian and Russian advisers to Massoud became replaced by CIA operatives and Green Beret A team members.

A major setback in the war on terror, according to Mir, is that Iran and Russia are now allied in Afghanistan on the side of their old enemy.

The first major indication of Iran's change of heart toward the Taliban came in the wake of the bombing of Tora Bora in December 2001, when Mullah Omar and hundreds of his soldiers and al-Qaida agents, scaled the mountains between the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, cut through the southern provinces of Afghanistan and headed west to Iran, where they found safe refuge, thanks to the intervention of Imad Mugniyah and the other leaders of Hezbollah. The newly arrived guests included such luminaries as Saad bin Laden, Osama's eldest son; Yaaz bin Sifat and Saif al-Adel, al-Qaida military planners; and Mohammed Islam Haani, the mayor of Kabul under the Taliban. Within Iran, they were placed in luxurious safe-houses under the protection of SAVAMA, the Iranian intelligence service.

When the war on terror moved to Iraq, Iran came to serve as a base of operations for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al-Qaida field commanders to mount attacks on the occupying armies.

This monumental event – the union between Sunni and Shiite – remained largely ignored by Western observers.

While the war dragged on in Iraq, Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders returned to Pakistan, gained thousands of new recruits, secured control of much of the tribal areas, and launched the re-conquest of Afghanistan.

The Taliban soldiers are now accompanied by advisers and regulars from the Iranian army and, according to Mir, within Afghanistan, Mullah Omar has received visits from his old friend and fellow jihadi, Osama bin Laden.

Because of this newly forged alliance, Mr. Mir speculates that the American Hiroshima may occur as soon as the Bush Administration launches an offensive against Iran to prevent the Shiite country from becoming a member of the nuclear club.

Hugh Cort, M.D. and Michael Travis contributed to this article.