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...local Taliban leader who used to work the resort's chairlift, said their group was forced to act because government security forces were using some of the schools as bunkers. In the forbidding tribal zone of Waziristan, followers of Baitullah Mehsud, the physical-education teacher turned assassin (both the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agencies say he is behind the attack that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December), slaughtered 22 government negotiators seeking to cement a cease-fire accord. And on July 6 a suicide bomber blew himself up near Islamabad's Red Mosque, killing 19. While...
Every Thursday morning, President George W. Bush gets an intelligence briefing from CIA chief General Michael Hayden. Invariably, according to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, the President asks, "How are we doing on No. 1 and No. 2?"--meaning Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The answer, more often than not, amounts to "Same as last week, Mr. President." Despite a seven-year manhunt along the lawless frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's leader and his deputy remain at large, thanks to their superior knowledge of the terrain and the protection of local tribes. Now bin Laden...
Counterterrorism officials say the best hope for nabbing No. 1 and No. 2 may lie in the capture of second-tier al-Qaeda commanders who know where their bosses are hiding. A recent CIA report speculates that bin Laden has long-term kidney disease and may have only months to live, two U.S. officials familiar with the report told TIME. (A CIA spokesman denied the report exists.) The Pentagon has requested that Bush sign an "execute order" expanding its authority to go after these commanders in Pakistani territory; senior counterterrorism and Defense Department officials tell TIME that broader authority...
...jihad, some experts contend, has moved beyond Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Dr. Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer, lays out the view in his new book, Leaderless Jihad, arguing that "the present threat has evolved from a structured group of al-Qaeda masterminds controlling vast resources and issuing commands to a multitude of informal groups trying to emulate their predecessors by conceiving and executing operations from the bottom up. These 'homegrown' wannabes form a scattered global network, a leaderless jihad." According to this assessment, two decades since its founding in Peshawar, Pakistan, al-Qaeda remains a source...
...Philip Mudd, the former No. 2 in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, who is now working at the FBI to help improve its intelligence capabilities, told me, "There is a very clear, almost mathematical increase in lethality as soon as plotters touch the FATA...