Bin Laden's New Message.

The article discusses an audiotape from Osama Bin Laden. In his latest audiotape pronouncement to the world, released Dec.16 on an extremist Islamic website, bin Laden largely shifted his attention from the U.S. to the Saudi royal family. He called its members "agents of infidels," praised the Dec. 6 attack on the U.S. consulate in Jidda and urged Muslims to support the insurgency in Iraq. According to one leading expert, the new tape was part of a change in emphasis in recent communications by the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri--an effort to speak as much to the Muslim world as to the U.S. and a paving of the theological way for what may be another major attack on the U.S. Michael Scheuer, an al-Qaeda analyst who recently retired from the CIA and once headed its bin Laden unit, tells TIME he believes that in their series of recent messages and tapes, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have been subtly addressing criticism from some Muslim clerics that the Sept. 11 attacks violated Islamic edicts against surprise attacks.