At last, it seemed, they knew. For nearly a year, the question loomed: had bin Laden been killed in the devastating U.S. bombing campaign, or had he somehow managed to escape and lie low, possibly in the lawless border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan? Some audio experts said the sound quality on the tape was too poor for a 100 percent match. But technical analysts at the secretive National Security Agency believe it would have been almost impossible for even the most skilled Qaeda hoaxter to convincingly cut and paste the message together from bits of old bin Laden speeches and broadcasts. Especially since several of the world events he mentions on the tape–the attack in Bali, the Chechen takeover of a Moscow theater–took place only recently.
The bin Laden tape put already jittery intelligence agencies on even higher alert. For weeks before the tape’s appearance, U.S. and European spies had noticed an alarming increase in the amount of “chatter”–intercepted conversations between terror suspects–a possible signal that an attack was imminent. As usual, the information was cryptic. No one could say where, when or how the next strike would come. In the days after the tape was aired, the string of terrorist attacks since 9-11–the synagogue bombing in Tunisia, the attack in Indonesia, the bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen–took on new significance. Were they, as once believed, isolated strikes by a fragmented, leaderless Qaeda struggling to recover–or were they orchestrated by Osama bin Laden himself?
The notion that bin Laden was simply waiting, certain that his pursuers would become complacent and vulnerable, stung intelligence officials. Just two months ago federal agents were openly boasting that they had seriously disrupted Al Qaeda. In September, Dale Watson, then chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism unit, confidently told NEWSWEEK, “Are they capable of pulling off a… big event attack again? The most obvious answer is, no.”
Now, as intelligence reports about a coming attack escalated, that confidence melted away. Last week, in a dire but frustratingly vague warning that seemed to reflect increasingly fraying nerves, the FBI cautioned that “Al Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks” resulting in “mass casualties, severe damage to the American economy and maximum psychological trauma.” Warnings, later discredited, also went out to hospitals. Anonymous callers threatened the New York headquarters of NBC.
Some law-enforcement agents privately complain that the FBI warnings are over the top, and will only panic the public–while drawing attention away from successes. Senior federal officials tell NEWSWEEK that the government has captured or killed a third of Al Qaeda’s top operatives, including “a handful of financial advisers.” (Others familiar with the tally are more skeptical; one put the figure at maybe 10 percent.) And late last week the Feds further tried to calm fears about a Qaeda resurgence by disclosing that a top Qaeda figure had recently been captured. Once again, they wouldn’t give a name. But a senior official told NEWSWEEK the man is a “multiple plotter”; another source said he was among the top 24 Qaeda operatives. Trying to find bin Laden–or unravel what he may be planning next–will be especially difficult, not least because much of what we know about his methods and motives has come from captured operatives. It’s not always clear just how true or useful the information is. Like elite U.S. soldiers, Al Qaeda captives are trained in counterinterrogation tactics. They often tell their questioners what they think they want to hear–or send investigators down seemingly plausible dead ends.
Not all the information prisoners give up has turned out to be fabricated. Senior intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that they are now “100 percent certain” that before the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, bin Laden had succeeded in “making and experimenting” with small amounts of biological and chemical agents. Officials also say they have confirmed that Al Qaeda had acquired small quantities of radioactive material, possibly to be used in a “dirty bomb”–though it’s still unclear how far along they were in actually making a weapon. According to a classified intelligence report, obtained by NEWSWEEK, Qaeda operatives routinely scoured U.S. newspapers for “inspiration” about possible targets. When interrogators asked Abu Zubaydah, the captured Qaeda operations chief, about efforts to construct a dirty bomb, he said that the terrorist group first came across the idea in a newspaper. “He noted this idea was particularly attractive because the ‘Americans gave us the idea of how to kill them’.”
Perhaps unintentionally, Abu Zubaydah may also have provided investigators with a key clue about the purpose of the latest bin Laden tape. NEWSWEEK has learned that last month they asked him about an earlier audiotape, made by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s still-at-large No. 2. Broadcast on Al-Jazeera, it warned of an attack that would “target the hinges of your economy.” Abu Zubaydah told interrogators that if Al Qaeda were planning a major terror attack against civilians, that message would be followed by a more expansive warning that would seek to justify the action to Muslims around the world. The new bin Laden tape spooked many U.S. intelligence analysts because it seemed to closely follow Zawahiri’s prediction. “Remember our killed children every day in Palestine and Iraq,” bin Laden said. “Remember our killed men in Afghanistan.” As one intelligence official put it, “This was exactly the kind of thing Abu Zubaydah said we would hear.”
It’s still not clear just what bin Laden was trying to accomplish with his latest message–frighten Americans, send coded instructions to his followers–or why he chose to deliver it now. European intelligence agencies were alarmed at bin Laden’s focus on U.S. partners in the terror war. “Your governments have allied with the States and bombed us in Afghanistan,” bin Laden said. “Namely Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Germany and Australia.” Some European analysts believe bin Laden was hoping to create fear among U.S. allies, and bolster the European antiwar movement, causing a rift between the United States and its friends. “Bin Laden has targeted the softies,” says French scholar and author Gilles Kepel. (Just last week three men believed to be North African members of a Qaeda-linked radical group were charged in an alleged plot to carry out an attack in London. The British press reported it may have involved releasing cyanide in the London Underground.)
Whatever bin Laden’s intent, U.S. law- enforcement and intelligence agencies once again found themselves scrambling to defend themselves. Senate Democrats, still smarting from their election defeat, tossed aside any pretense of loyalty to the commander in chief. Soon-to-be Senate minority leader Tom Daschle lashed out at the administration’s failure to tame Al Qaeda. “We can’t find bin Laden,” Daschle said. Al Qaeda “continues[s] to be as great a threat today as they were one and a half years ago. So by what measure can we claim to be successful so far?” The White House fumed. “I won’t opine about the motivations behind his comments,” said one senior administration official.
Though the job of capturing bin Laden and rounding up his henchmen falls to the CIA, it’s the FBI’s intelligence shortcomings here at home that have received the most withering criticism. The bureau has been especially worried about calls from some members of Congress to strip it of its domestic intelligence role. Senate critics, led by Bob Graham, the top Intelligence Committee Democrat, have repeatedly scolded the FBI for being slow to change post-9-11. The bureau, they say, is still almost exclusively focused on basic law enforcement–building cases and making arrests–and neglects the less glamorous long-term job of tracking suspected terrorists within our borders. Graham tells NEWSWEEK that he will push for the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency similar to Britain’s M.I.5 to take over for the FBI. The bureau, says one official, “is getting the crap beat out of them.”
The White House is sticking by Director Robert Mueller, saying he’s doing a “fine job” of overhauling the bureau to meet post-9-11 challenges. One administration official bluntly called the idea of an American M.I.5 “bulls–t,” and something they’re “staying away from.” Even so, privately officials say they haven’t ruled out the creation of “some agency or arm” to do just that.
Far from the endless finger-pointing in Washington, U.S. intelligence agents overseas are once again closely focused on a single task: finding bin Laden. Intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that they guess–and they admit they can only guess–that bin Laden is still holed up on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. They say it’s conceivable that he may have taken refuge in another Qaeda-friendly state like Yemen, though they think it unlikely.
They also wonder why bin Laden released his latest message on audio only–in the past, he has offered up videos of himself, machine gun handy, reciting a prepared text or lecturing associates. Some analysts speculate that bin Laden might be sick and doesn’t want his followers and enemies to see his weakness. U.S. officials confirm that Pakistan recently arrested and questioned Amir Aziz, a British-trained Pakistani physician who officials say has treated bin Laden in the past–and may be able to provide clues about his health.
Along the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, many people claim to have seen bin Laden in recent months and weeks. A farmer insists bin Laden and a phalanx of followers trekked across his land late one night. A “close associate” claims the terrorist mastermind is no longer moving cave to cave, but has been gaining weight on a diet rich in honey and olive oil. The sources of these stories are sketchy, and the facts mostly uncheckable. But intelligence agencies painstakingly track them down, one by one, hoping. The new tape may not make it easier for bin Laden’s pursuers to find him. But at least they are no longer left to wonder if they’ve been chasing after a ghost.
