By Friday morning, word had spread that Pakistani soldiers and U.S. intelligence agents were hot on bin Laden’s trail, hovering over the caravan in helicopters and photographing the group from surveillance planes equipped with night-vision cameras. The story took on greater urgency when Baluchistan’s Home minister, Sanaullah Zahri, announced that two of bin Laden’s sons had already been captured in Afghanistan. The reports seemed credible enough. For days, there had been leaks that raids on the hideouts of recently arrested Qaeda higher-ups, including 9-11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had yielded clues to bin Laden’s whereabouts. TV news jumped on the story, all but eclipsing coverage of the U.N. inspectors’ umpteenth report on Iraq. But by Friday afternoon, the Pakistanis were denying the whole thing, and U.S. officials said neither bin Laden nor his sons were directly in their sights.
Last week’s false flurry of excitement showed just how high hopes are that bin Laden’s days on the run may be numbered. For months, most U.S. officials have been convinced that bin Laden was hiding out in northwest Pakistan along the Afghan border. The search in that region intensified last week, as Pakistani agents–backed up by the CIA–launched a series of patrols designed to flush out bin Laden. U.S. aircraft dropped leaflets reminding the locals of the $25 million bounty on bin Laden’s head. (The leaflets show stacks of $20 bills picturing bin Laden behind bars.) Some Pakistani sources believe bin Laden and some of his followers may try to head to ports to the south in an effort to flee by ship, which may explain the stories that the terrorist master–mind was passing through Baluchistan.
For more than a year, frustrated investigators seemed reduced to chasing shadows and decoys, as bin Laden outwitted them at every turn. His methods of evasion were simple but maddeningly effective–staying silent for months to make his hunters believe he was dead; sending foot soldiers into the mountains carrying satphones, while he slipped away in the other direction. But now, intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK they believe the steady flow of new evidence from captured operatives may help them slowly close in. “People are optimistic that we are making some progress,” says one U.S. intelligence official. “But people who are sitting at the edge of their chair are getting a little carried away. It is very tough to locate people in that region.”
If bin Laden is brought down soon, he may have Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to blame. Mohammed’s importance can not be overestimated; U.S. officials believe he conceived and directed 9-11 and a slew of other major Qaeda attacks. The 3 a.m. raid on his hideaway in Rawalpindi earlier this month turned up a “mother lode” of incriminating documents, phones and computer data, one source told NEWSWEEK. Officials confirmed that the material included information on about a dozen Qaeda operatives in New York and the Midwest. Most were already being watched; the rest were immediately put under FBI surveillance. The evidence confirmed earlier intelligence that Mohammed was plotting a series of terrorist attacks on American gas stations and bridges. The raid also netted another big fish–Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi citizen believed to be the “paymaster” of the 9-11 plot.
Mohammed’s capture was the result of months of intense surveillance by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, along with dumb luck and old-fashioned greed. The key break came about five weeks ago, when Pakistani agents were tipped off to a Qaeda safe house in Baluchistan’s capital, Quetta. They raided the apartment, hoping to find Mohammed. He had escaped, but they did capture a lesser Qaeda soldier: Muhammad Abdel-Rahman, a son of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations and other New York landmarks.
The agents got a bigger break, NEWSWEEK has learned, when another radical Egyptian arrested in the raid decided to cash in on the $25 million bounty on Mohammed’s head. “He turned over and made a deal with the United States,” said a Middle Eastern intelligence source. The Egyptian offered to dime out Mohammed, but demanded an additional $2 million to relocate to Britain with his family. A law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK that the United States agreed to pay the reward to an unidentified informant, but wouldn’t discuss details.
Agents in the FBI’s counterterrorism division had been tracking Mohammed across the globe for years. The closest they’d come to nabbing him before was back in 1995, when the FBI and CIA tracked him to Qatar. By then, he had al–ready been linked to a failed plot to blow up U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean. The FBI developed a plan to snatch him from his Qatari safe house and fly him to New York for trial. But the plan was never launched. According to numerous sources interviewed by NEWSWEEK, the proposal produced a fierce battle among Clinton administration officials, who worried about an anti-U.S. backlash, or worse, a disaster similar to the 1993 “Blackhawk Down” debacle in Somalia. Generals in the Pentagon reported they’d need some 2,000 troops to get the job done. “It was like the invasion of Normandy,” says one former U.S. official.
Exasperated, FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote a letter to the Qatari foreign minister, asking him to arrest Mohammed and turn him over to the United States. But just as the FBI had feared, Mohammed’s friends in the Qatari government tipped him off, and he disappeared. Soon after, he hooked up with bin Laden in Afghanistan, and began plotting attacks on the United States. Veteran FBI agents are still bitter about the lingering “what ifs” of a missed opportunity.
Intelligence agents are making up for lost time. Sources tell NEWSWEEK that Mohammed was quickly flown to Baghram air base in Afghanistan, where he is now under interrogation. A senior law-enforcement official says he has given up virtually nothing. “It was standard counter-interrogation. He tells you what you think you already know, and tries to deflect questions about anything you don’t know,” the official says. “I’m not really sanguine about what we’re going to get out of this guy.” The CIA refused to comment on its methods of extracting information. But an Arab intelligence official says that the questioning is likely being conducted by foreign agents under U.S. supervision. Evidence found in Mohammed’s hideaway suggested that he and bin Laden may have been in recent contact.
U.S. officials caution against putting too much emphasis on bin Laden’s capture. “The movement doesn’t depend on bin Laden’s survival,” says one FBI official. U.S. authorities fear that in the absence of a clear leader, dozens of smaller, unknown terrorist cells now held in check by bin Laden may strike out on their own.
Even broken apart, Al Qaeda still has a wide network of radical adherents. NEWSWEEK has learned that one leader of a loose jihadist network is now suspected of plotting attacks from his London prison cell. Imam Abu Qatada, who held prayer meetings attended by Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, has been identified by governments around the world as the type of spiritual figure who could continue to incite terror attacks against the United States even in bin Laden’s absence. U.S. officials have called him a key bin Laden “ambassador” in Europe. Videotapes in which he preached jihad were found in the Hamburg apartments of 9-11 associates. After several months in hiding, Abu Qatada was arrested and detained without trial. Even so, British authorities believe that he somehow smuggled out a secret signal to followers in London, instructing them to launch a poison attack with ricin. The plot was foiled when British raids turned up traces of ricin and the equipment used to make it. Yet another attack averted. But as intelligence agencies continue to bring down the known terrorists of the world, they are all too mindful of how many more there are still at large, and out of sight.
