samir khan

When Osama bin Laden issued his videotaped message to the American people last month, a young jihad enthusiast went online to help spread the word.

"America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness," he wrote on his blog. "America is known to be a people of arrogance."

Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents' home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups.

In recent days, he has featured "glad tidings" from a North African militant leader whose group killed 31 Algerian troops. He posted a scholarly treatise arguing for violent jihad, translated into English. He listed hundreds of links to secret sites from which his readers could obtain the latest blood-drenched insurgent videos from Iraq.

His neatly organized site also includes a file called "United States of Losers," which showcased a recent news broadcast about a firefight in Afghanistan with this added commentary from Mr. Khan: "You can even see an American soldier hiding during the ambush like a baby!! AllahuAkbar! AllahuAkbar!"

Mr. Khan, who was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Queens, is an unlikely foot soldier in what Al Qaeda calls the "Islamic jihadi media." He has grown up in middle-class America and wrestles with his worried parents about his religious fervor. Yet he is stubborn. "I will do my best to speak the truth, and even if it annoys the disbelievers, the truth must be preached," Mr. Khan said in an interview.

While there is nothing to suggest that Mr. Khan is operating in concert with militant leaders, or breaking any laws, he is part of a growing constellation of apparently independent media operators who are broadcasting the message of Al Qaeda and other groups, a message that is increasingly devised, translated and aimed for a Western audience.

Terrorism experts at West Point say there are as many as 100 English language sites offering militant Islamic views, with Mr. Khan's ― which claims 500 regular readers ― among the more active. While their reach is difficult to assess, it is clear from a review of extremist material and interviews that militants are seeking to appeal to young American and European Muslims by playing on their anger over the war in Iraq and the image of Islam under attack.

Tedious Arabic screeds are reworked into flashy English productions. Recruitment tracts are issued in multiple languages, like a 39-page, electronic, English version of a booklet urging women to join the fight against the West.

There are even online novellas like "Rakan bin Williams," about a band of Christian European converts who embraced Al Qaeda and "promised God that they will carry the flag of their distant brothers and seek vengeance on the evil doers."

Militant Islamists are turning grainy car-bombing tapes into slick hip-hop videos and montage movies, all readily available on Western sites like YouTube, the online video smorgasbord.

"It is as if you would watch a Hollywood movie," said Abu Saleh, a 21-year-old German devotee of Al Qaeda videos who visits Internet cafes in Berlin twice a week to get the latest releases. "The Internet has totally changed my view on things."

An Internet Strategy

Al Qaeda and its followers have used the Internet to communicate and rally support for years, but in the past several months the Western tilt of the message and the sophistication of the media have accelerated. So has the output. Since the beginning of the year, Al Qaeda's media operation, Al Sahab, has issued new videotapes as often as every three days. Even more come from Iraq, where insurgents are pumping them out daily.

That production line is the legacy of one man: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed in June 2006 by American bombs.

Mr. Zarqawi learned the power of the Internet in prison, according to a former associate who was imprisoned with him in Jordan a decade ago. Mr. Zarqawi's jailhouse group of 32 Islamists sought to recruit other prisoners by handwriting a newsletter, Al Tawheed, when it discovered a larger audience.

"We sent them outside, to brothers in Europe and England," who posted the newsletters on militant Web sites, the associate said, asking not be identified because he said he is involved with Islamist activities.

In Iraq, Mr. Zarqawi embraced the video camera as a weapon of war. "He made the decision that every group should have a video camera with them, and every operation should be taped," said a Palestinian militant who went to Iraq in 2005 to teach foreign fighters from Morocco and parts of Europe how to build bombs and stage roadside attacks.

Two Lebanese intelligence officials confirmed that the Palestinian, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Omar, had worked with Mr. Zarqawi in Iraq, and he played a video of foreign fighters in Iraq for reporters of The New York Times.

Abu Omar, 37, a muscular man who carried a Glock 21 pistol tucked into the belt of his camouflage pants during an interview at his home in Lebanon, said Mr. Zarqawi also had him tape his bombmaking classes so his expertise would not be lost if he were killed.

"We had two cameramen, people who learned how to do this before they came to Iraq," Abu Omar said. "And after filming, we had different houses in the area where we made the videos."

Dahia al-Maqdassi, 26, a Palestinian who said he produced insurgent videos in Iraq two years ago, said, "In every city in Iraq they had a little office where someone did film operations." He described his "media section" as a house near Falluja where 6 to 10 people worked. "We finished the film and then sent it to jihadi Web sites," Mr. Maqdassi said.

Propaganda Rap Video

One of the most influential sites is Tajdeed, which is based in London and run by Dr. Muhammad Massari, a Saudi physicist and dissident. Over lunch at a McDonald's near his home, Dr. Massari said Mr. Zarqawi's insurgent videos from Iraq inspired local productions like "Dirty Kuffar," the Arabic word for nonbeliever. The 2004 rap music video mixed images of Western leaders with others purporting to show American troops cheer as they shot injured Iraqi civilians.

Dr. Massari, who helped promote the video, said similar crossover productions soon followed and made their way to his Web site.

"I never touch the videos that are on my forums," said Dr. Massari, who wears a long white Arabic robe. "Someone with Al Qaeda uploads them, probably at Internet cafes, to password-protected sites. Then they call a friend, say, in Australia or Brasília, and say, 'Hi Johnny, your mom is traveling today.' That is the code to download the video. It goes up and down like that a few times, with no trace, until someone posts a link on my site."

Last spring, Al Qaeda made what analysts say was a bold attempt to tap potential supporters in the United States. In a videotaped interview, Ayman al-Zawahri, a bin Laden lieutenant, praised Malcolm X and urged American blacks and other minorities to see that "we are waging jihad to lift oppression from all of mankind."

The tape quickly found an audience. Mr. Zawahri "cares about black people," wrote a blogger with Vibe, the American hip-hop and urban culture magazine, which claims 1.6 million visits a month. "At least, I think that's why he's quoting Malcolm X in his latest mix tape, which dropped last weekend."

Umar Lee, a 32-year-old Muslim convert from St. Louis, offered a stinging critique of Mr. Zawahri on his blog for Muslim Americans, criticizing "the second-class status many blacks live in right in the Arab World." Soon, Mr. Lee's blog churned with commentary on the parallels between Arab and black American radicals.

A four-minute version of the hourlong Qaeda video, entitled "To Black Americans," has logged more than 1,800 views on YouTube in the four months since it was posted.

Among those who posted a link to the YouTube version was Mr. Khan, the North Carolina blogger who said he was struck by the simplicity in the messages of both Al Qaeda and Malcolm X. "They are geniuses for having the ability to mold their ideology into simple yet influential messages that can reach the grass-roots level," he said.

Mr. Khan produces his blog anonymously, but was identified by The Times through the e-mail account he used in previous online discussions. (Pictures he had posted online helped The Times distinguish him from another, unrelated North Carolina resident, about 10 years older, who has the same name.)

In an interview at a local mosque, where he sat on a prayer rug wearing a traditional Arabic robe, Mr. Khan traced his increasing militancy.

His blog has attracted enough notoriety that vigilante groups opposed to jihadi sites have gotten him shut down a few times in recent months. He said he was somewhat surprised he had not been confronted by government authorities, although, he said, "I've never told anybody to build bombs."

His early postings, beginning in 2003, promoted strengthening Islam in North America through nonviolent confrontations. But with the escalating war in Iraq, bloodshed became a recurrent theme.

He described his favorite video from Iraq: a fiery suicide-bomber attack on an American outpost.

"It was something that brought great happiness to me," he said. "Because this is something America would never want to admit, that they are being crushed."

Asked how he felt living among people who had sent soldiers to Iraq, Mr. Khan said: "Whatever happens to their sons and daughters is none of my concern. They are people of hellfire and I have no concern for them."

A Teenage Transformation

Born in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Khan was 7 when his family moved to New York City and settled into the Queens neighborhood of Maspeth.

He mirrored his teenage peers, from their slang to their baggy pants, until August 2001 when, at age 15, he said, he attended a weeklong summer camp at a mosque in Queens, which was sponsored by a fundamentalist but nonviolent group now known as the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA).

"They were teaching things about religion and brotherhood that captivated me," Mr. Khan said. He said he went back to school knowing "what I wanted to do with my life: be a firm Muslim, a strong Muslim, a practicing Muslim."

He prayed more regularly. He dressed more modestly. He stopped listening to music except for Soldiers of Allah, a Los Angeles hip-hop group, now defunct, whose tunes like "Bring Islam Back" continue to have worldwide appeal among militant youths.

He also befriended members of the Islamic Thinkers Society, a tiny group that promotes radical, nonviolent Islam by leafleting in Times Square and Jackson Heights, Queens.

After moving with his family to North Carolina in 2004, Mr. Khan said, he attended a community college for three years and earned money selling various products, including kitchen knives.

But he began spending chunks of his days on the blog he created in late 2005, "Inshallahshaheed," which translates as "a martyr soon if God wills." The Internet traffic counter Alexa.com, which rarely is able to measure the popularity of blogs because they do not have enough readers, ranked his among the top one percent of one hundred million Internet sites in the world.

If Mr. Khan's extreme rhetoric has won him a wider audience, it has caused him problems at home. Last year, his father tried to pull him back to the family's more moderate views by asking an imam to intervene.

"I tried to bring arguments from the Koran and scholars, and said, 'Whatever you are thinking it is not true,'" said Mustapha Elturk, a family friend and the leader of IONA, the Islamic organization that first inspired Mr. Khan. But Mr. Khan did not budge, he said.

Mr. Khan said he separated from IONA over one matter: the organization would not support violent jihad without the endorsement of a Muslim nation's leader, which Mr. Khan argues is unnecessary.

Mr. Elturk said, "His father and family are really scared that he might do something."

Attempts to Shut Down Blog

From time to time, Mr. Khan said, his father also cut off his Internet access and, to placate him, Mr. Khan recently added a disclaimer to his blog disavowing responsibility for the views expressed on the site.

He has also been fending off citizen watchdogs who are working to knock sites likes his off the Internet. Twice in September his blog went dark when his service provider shut him down, citing complaints about the nature of his postings.

Mr. Khan has now moved his blog to a site called Muslimpad, whose American operators recently moved from Texas to Amman, Jordan. Their larger forum, Islamic Network, is the host of discussions among English-speaking Muslims. One of their former employees, Daniel Maldonado, was convicted this year in federal court of associating with terrorists at their training camps in Somalia.

Mr. Khan said that he had dreams about meeting Mr. bin Laden and that he would not rule out picking up a weapon himself one day. In a recent essay, he argued that jihad was mandatory for all Muslims, and he cited three ways to fulfill this obligation: join fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan or Algeria; send them money; or promote militant videos as part of the jihad media.

For now, he said, he is fulfilling his obligations by helping other Muslims understand their religion. Recently he posted a video of a news report from Somalia showing a grenade-wielding American who had joined the Islamists.

"He is an example of a Muslim who follows the Religion of Islaam," Mr. Khan wrote.
Moss of the New York Times has outted Inshallashaheed, the al Qaeda supporting blogger who we've been investigating for over a year. I've been sitting on his true identity for months, but in one fell swoop Samir ibn Zafar Khan, who lives in Charlotte North Carolina, has been identified.

Thanks a lot to Michael Moss and the New York Times for blowing an ongoing investigation into a known al Qaeda sympathizer who lives here in the United States. I've known about this piece for a few weeks and wrote the NY Times to ask Moss not to run it. No reply from the Times.

While we appreciate Moss's commitment to spreading the word about the Internet Jihad, we really wish he would have consulted with us on the matter. He has a right to out Inshallahshaheed as Samir Khan, but doing so has jeopardized an ongoing investigation into a terror ring which begins in the US and ends in Somalia.

But that's just like the NY Times, isn't it? In Moss's defense, he seems to have asked the FBI if there was an investigation into Khan, and they declined to comment.

There's even a video of him here.

NY Times:

When Osama bin Laden issued his videotaped message to the American people last month, a young jihad enthusiast went online to help spread the word.

"America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness," he wrote on his blog. "America is known to be a people of arrogance."

Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents' home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups....

Mr. Khan, who was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Queens, is an unlikely foot soldier in what Al Qaeda calls the "Islamic jihadi media." He has grown up in middle-class America and wrestles with his worried parents about his religious fervor. Yet he is stubborn. "I will do my best to speak the truth, and even if it annoys the disbelievers, the truth must be preached," Mr. Khan said in an interview.

You'll remember when I revealed that Inshallashaheed was an American, that he openly challenged me to prove it on his blog. In a personal e-mail to Samir I told him just to send me his address which would save me a lot of trouble.

What Samir didn't know was that I already had his address. I knew he lived in or around Charlotte, so I put out the word to Charlotte area bloggers for help. Thanks to Jeff of Meckdeck I learned what I thought was Samir's address and phone number. But that turned out to be another Samir Khan who lives in the area.

It turned out that our original investigation into Khan was right and that we already knew where he lived. We have a real picture of Samir. We have his address. We had a picture of his house. Hell, we have his car license plate number. All because Samir posted it on the internet, but using his real name instead of "inshallahshaheed".

Ethical dilemma: If you live in Charlotte wouldn't you like to know if you're living next door to a known al Qaeda supporter? Should I reveal his address? Should I post a picture of him?

Moss continues, and opts not to identify The Jawa Report as the "vigilante groups" that got Samir's previous blogs shut down (see here and here). And his new digs are also closed as of yesterday:

In an interview at a local mosque, where he sat on a prayer rug wearing a traditional Arabic robe, Mr. Khan traced his increasing militancy.

His blog has attracted enough notoriety that vigilante groups opposed to jihadi sites have gotten him shut down a few times in recent months. He said he was somewhat surprised he had not been confronted by government authorities, although, he said, "I've never told anybody to build bombs."

Uh, not true, and Samir is guilty of other things. Let's start with his public crime: Treason. He openly supports the enemies of the United States in a time of war.

US Constitution Article III, section 3: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

But there are other things Samir is guilty of. He knows it and I know it. Let's see him deny it, just like he denied that he was an American.

In fact, on one of Samir's now defunct blogs, he claims to have helped a man by the name of Mujahid fe Sabeelillah prepare to go to Somalia for jihad. Of course we've always known that Mujahid fe Sabeelillah was really just one of Samir Khan's nicknames. How did we know? See this post by Samir and notice the two nicknames.

But there is some truth to the fact that he is involved with jihad in Somalia. We'll return to that later:

He described his favorite video from Iraq: a fiery suicide-bomber attack on an American outpost.

"It was something that brought great happiness to me," he said. "Because this is something America would never want to admit, that they are being crushed."

Asked how he felt living among people who had sent soldiers to Iraq, Mr. Khan said: "Whatever happens to their sons and daughters is none of my concern. They are people of hellfire and I have no concern for them."

So, how did Samir become an al Qaeda supporter?
Born in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Khan was 7 when his family moved to New York City and settled into the Queens neighborhood of Maspeth.

He mirrored his teenage peers, from their slang to their baggy pants, until August 2001 when, at age 15, he said, he attended a weeklong summer camp at a mosque in Queens, which was sponsored by a fundamentalist but nonviolent group now known as the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA).

Samir used to be affiliated with the IONA, but I didn't need an interview with him to know that. He has a lengthy screed against democracy at an affiliated mosque's website here.
He also befriended members of the Islamic Thinkers Society, a tiny group that promotes radical, nonviolent Islam by leafleting in Times Square and Jackson Heights, Queens.
Those of you that have been following my personal dispute with inshallahshaheed also know that he denied being affiliated with Omar Bakri Mohammed's American devotees in the Islamic Thinkers Society of New York. Again, he challenged me, prove it.

Of course, on one of his now defunct webpages he openly declared for Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama'ah, which is what Bakri Mohammed's followers call themselves now. He also linked the Islamic Thinkers Society and used much of the same propaganda as them and of Bakri Mohammed's Islambase, which was kind of a dead giveaway.

From time to time, Mr. Khan said, his father also cut off his Internet access and, to placate him, Mr. Khan recently added a disclaimer to his blog disavowing responsibility for the views expressed on the site.

He has also been fending off citizen watchdogs who are working to knock sites likes his off the Internet. Twice in September his blog went dark when his service provider shut him down, citing complaints about the nature of his postings.

Again, no mention of The Jawa Report as the force that took Samir offline a few times. I also love the disclaimer idea. It's so funny. Al Qaeda's own websites, the ones identified as "Obelisk" in recent days, run these silly disclaimers.
Mr. Khan has now moved his blog to a site called Muslimpad, whose American operators recently moved from Texas to Amman, Jordan. Their larger forum, Islamic Network, is the host of discussions among English-speaking Muslims. One of their former employees, Daniel Maldonado, was convicted this year in federal court of associating with terrorists at their training camps in Somalia.
Wow, it's almost as if Moss was reading The Jawa Report.
Mr. Khan said that he had dreams about meeting Mr. bin Laden and that he would not rule out picking up a weapon himself one day. In a recent essay, he argued that jihad was mandatory for all Muslims, and he cited three ways to fulfill this obligation: join fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan or Algeria; send them money; or promote militant videos as part of the jihad media.

For now, he said, he is fulfilling his obligations by helping other Muslims understand their religion. Recently he posted a video of a news report from Somalia showing a grenade-wielding American who had joined the Islamists.

"He is an example of a Muslim who follows the Religion of Islaam," Mr. Khan wrote.

He's also an example of a man preparing to do violent jihad. This is what he says about himself:
Currently, Mujahid fe Sabeelillah is working on making Hijrah to one of the lands of Jihad so that he may obtain the pleasure of Allah and become an inhabitant of Jannah through martyrdom, inshAllah. If he is alive after the repelling of the enemies in the land of Jihad and the establishment of the Shari'ah, he intends to make his way to another land of Jihad to get rid of the enemies of Allah and liberate the land from Shirk and Kufr and to establish the Deen al-Haqq. He has given up the riches and luxuries that this world offers him, and that many Muslims have given in to, and has followed the path of his ancestors (i.e., the Sahaba) which was the life of Jihad fe Sabeelillah till martyrdom. He vows to his death to liberate the Muslim lands from Shirk and Kufr and to fight with the sword until the Angels take his soul.
But there is also plenty of evidence that, although he personally has not made the trek to Somalia and then on to Iraq, like he promises he's going to do, that he has helped others do so.

More to come........

Thanks so much to Allahakchew, Howie, and the whole Jawa crew who first identified Ishallashaheed in the comments section and then later on in e-mails.

UPDATE: Inshallahshaheed is back up, and at new digs.

Thanks to TBR, Velvet Hammer, and others for notifying me.

UPDATE: It's not just North Carolina. It's Al Qaeda in ....... New Jersey. By "Northern New Jersey", of course, they mean "New York City suburbs", the home of the Islamic Thinkers Society of New York.

The British website of the same group is called "Islam Base". Significance? "Qaeda" means "base" in Arabic.


By Dr. Rusty "John Doe" Shackleford at October 15, 2007 10:08 AM | Comments (38) | Trackback l digg this








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The Great Satan (OC) Bud: And we are back to the beautiful Bellagio hotel in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. For ESPN2, I'm Bud Kanz, with my partner, Bobbi Schrager --

Bobbi: Hello.

Bud: Bobbi, we're now just minutes from the start of the Oscar telecast. We've finished the preliminary rounds. Tell me -- what have you seen so far today from our four players that's surprised you?

Bobbi: Well, Bud, first of all, let me just say that we're seeing today is professional Oscar-pool picking at its best. These players are at the top of their field. That said, I'm shocked that Tex Anson, a two-time world champion, went with Clint Eastwood for Best Director. I mean, I love Eastwood and I was a big fan of Unforgiven. But I just don't think Mystic River is strong enough to sway the Academy away from Peter Jackson.

Bud: A lot of people in the gallery seemed to agree with you, judging from those boos.

Bobbi: Bud, my sources tell me that Anson has a real soft spot for Eastwood. I think that's going to cost him here tonight. You know, there's an old saying among Oscar pool players: Root with your heart. Vote with your head.

Bud: That's a sensible philosophy -- and one that helped you to three world titles of your own.

Bobbi: It was a simpler sport back then, Bud. We didn't have DVD screeners -- or Miramax, for that matter. Back then, you just went with the Brits and hoped for the best.

Bud: You're too modest, Bobbi. Now, before we return to the action, I have to ask: what do you make of the newcomer, Samir Khan?

Bobbi: Very impressive, Bud. This former junior champion is coming off a solid finish at the SAG Awards Pool in Tempe, Arizona, so he's playing with a hot hand. But he's really turned it up a notch here tonight. He's shown he's a gutsy picker who's not afraid to put a check in a box.

Bud: What's surprised me, Bobbi, is his boldness right across the ballot.

Bobbi: We all knew Khan was strong in the Original Song and Costume Design categories. But he's really come out firing with his picks in Animated Short Film and Visual Effects. Simply stunning.

Bud: The judges have signaled three minutes to the start of the telecast. That means it's time for our players to fill in their picks in the final three categories -- Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture.

Bobbi: Listen to that crowd, Bud! Simply electric. They know that this is where Oscar Pools are won and lost.

Bud: Looks like Tex Anson's going with Sean Penn for Best Actor, as expected.

Bobbi: A risky pick. But remember, Anson nailed Jim Broadbent for Best Supporting Actor in 2002. So you can't discount his instincts.

Bud: To his left, we have Lorraine Schreft, the pride of Memphis. I've got to say, her picks tonight have been shaky.

Bobbi: She's definitely showing some nerves, Bud. Schreft won her office Oscar pool at FedEx eleven years running, but remember, she only joined the pro circuit two years ago. I think she's still finding her rhythm out there. I'll tell you one thing -- her pick tonight of Brother Bear for Best Animated Feature is going to haunt her for a long, long time.

Bud: She's registered her Best Actor selection: Bill Murray.

Bobbi: Oh, she's back on track! She's got to be happy with that pick!

Bud: And Samir Khan goes with...Bill Murray as well. No surprise there, Bobbi. And now, rounding out our foursome, we have actor Omar Epps, who earned a seat at the table with his stunning come-from-behind victory last year on FOX's Celebrity Oscar Pool.

Bobbi: He's the only one who picked Adrien Brody and Roman Polanski. That late surge left Matt Damon speechless.

Bud: Epps is considering the nominees. And he's going with...Ben Kingsley! Wow, I didn't see that coming.

Bobbi: Kingsley's a past winner, House of Sand and Fog was a real downer and it was a box-office dud to boot. In other words -- an obvious pass. Epps is showing his inexperience here.

Bud: He's playing at the adult table now! Next up: Best Actress. Bobbi, are we simply going to see a Charlize Theron sweep right across the board?

Bobbi: If you believe the so-called experts, then...yes. But that's what separates these players from the amateurs -- when everyone else says Vanessa Redgrave, they say Marisa Tomei.

Bud: This round kicks off with Schreft -- and she's picked Theron.

Bobbi: Playing it safe, Bud. I'd be very surprised if Khan doesn't go the same way -- yes, yes he does.

Bud: With everyone going for the young South African, it's going to hard for any of these poolsters to separate themselves from the pack. Let's see what Omar Epps is up to. He's conferring with the judges; he seems to be slightly confused.

Bobbi: Bud, I think he's asking about -- Nicole Kidman!

Bud: Yes! It seems that Epps does not realize she was not nominated! Omar, check your ballot!

Bobbi: This is a major blunder, Bud. I haven't seen anything like this since Richard "The Envelope" Roberts walked out in protest over Kevin Costner's Best Director win in 1990. Unbelievable.

Bud: Epps is scrambling now...he's only got ten seconds to choose! He's scanning the nominees -- and he's made his choice: Keisha Castle-Hughes.

Bobbi: That's got to be a huge disappointment to the Epps camp.

Bud: Epps is now essentially out of the running. This leaves an opening for Tex Anson, the wily Georgian...and he goes with -- Diane Keaton! Now there's a bit of a shocker.

Bobbi: Clearly, Tex is betting it all on a sentimental backlash from aging Academy voters put off by Monster's graphic violence and difficult subject matter. But I think he's seriously underestimated Theron's momentum coming into this ceremony. Makes you wonder if he even watched the Golden Globes.

Bud: Could be a big-time error by the champ. Well, we've seen some surprising picks in these final rounds, Bobbi. With only the Best Picture category remaining, I've got to believe that Samir Khan has an insurmountable lead in this pool!

Bobbi: Best Picture is an absolute gimme, Bud. So unless Djimon Hounsou takes Supporting Actor, Khan's picks are going to be very tough to beat.

Bud: The judges have signaled our players to make their final selections. And here come the picks for Best Picture: Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings, Seabiscuit.

Bobbi: Omar Epps is really struggling, Bud.

Bud: It certainly looks that way. We won't know for sure, however, until the final award is announced. Join us back here live as we tally the results and crown our 2004 Oscar Pool champion. Until then, this is Bud Kanz for Bobbi Schrager saying: so long, enjoy the show, and may the names in the envelopes be yours!

- MFF

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