CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: How does the Bush administration view this latest bin Laden tape? For that, we take to you Crawford, Texas, where the president is spending the rest of his holiday week. And our White House correspondent, Major Garrett, is there as well. Hello, Major.</s>MAJOR GARRETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Catherine. The best way to describe the Bush White House reaction to this latest bin Laden tape is, well, dismiss it. The White House releasing a statement last night saying that this is just more of the same terrorist propaganda, that the world and the White House has heard before. And that's going to be the sum total of the White House reaction, we are told, by senior advisers here. No effort on the part of the Bush administration to do what it did the last time there was an Osama bin Laden tape. That was in early November. At that time the administration thought it was crucial to get a U.S. voice speaking in Arabic on behalf of the U.S. government, out onto Al-Jazeera network and to the Arabic-speaking world, to react to and put into perspective the U.S. reaction to that propaganda blast from bin Laden in November. That's not going to happen this time. The White House, sensing that bin Laden's influence throughout the Arab-speaking world, is diminished considerably. They know that the government that used to protect him in Afghanistan, the Taliban, is now out of power. The al Qaeda network that operated once freely in Afghanistan has been destructed, in many cases demolished. They believe bin Laden is not only looking gaunt and drawn and somewhat pale, but also is on the run, and therefore just doesn't require or merit a kind of full-blow administration response, as he once did. So, short and sweet, terrorist propaganda and not much else, from the Bush White House -- Catherine.</s>CALLAWAY: All right, CNN's Major Garrett, thank you very much.
White House Dismisses Osama bin Laden Statement