Oct. 1 -- NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports on an incriminating phone call from Osama bin Laden to his mother.

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES

Oct. 1 — Osama bin Laden called his mother two days before the Sept. 11 terror attacks and told her, “In two days you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while,” NBC News has learned. Word of the phone call came as President Bush reported “good progress” in the battle against terrorism, saying authorities around the world had frozen $6 million in assets linked to terrorist activities and arrested or detained “about 150 terrorists and their supporters.”

THE CONTENTS of the phone call from bin Laden to his adoptive mother, Al-Kalifa bin Laden, were relayed to authorities in the United States by a foreign intelligence service, sources familiar with the the report told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to identify the foreign service that forwarded the information.

Al-Kalifa bin Laden was previously reported to have checked into a hospital in Paris on Sept. 12, the day after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The French magazine Le Point said she underwent a checkup in the American Hospital’s cancer unit.

Osama bin Laden, 44, is believed to be the only son of a woman from either Syria or Palestine. But the suspected terrorism mastermind was raised by Al-Kalifa bin Laden, another of Saudi construction magnate Mohammed bin Laden’s four wives.

The bin Laden family disowned Osama bin Laden after his alleged role in planning and funding terrorist attacks became known, but sources in the United States tell NBC News that Al-Kalifa bin Laden has remained on contact with her adopted outlaw son. She is believed to have attended the wedding of bin Laden’s son earlier this year in Afghanistan, the sources said. BUSH SPEAKS OF EARLY PROGRESS

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-- Anonymous, October 01, 2001