Word: qaeda
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Which is closer to dying: Osama bin Laden or the CIA's effort to catch him? Nothing has characterized the fruitlessness of the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader so much as the recurrent - and mostly inaccurate - reports that he is seriously ailing, or even at death's door. In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI's top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, said, "I personally think he is probably not with us anymore." Since then, of course...
...That prognosis, along with some on-the-ground intelligence and a well-aimed Hellfire missile, will get you a dead terrorist leader. Close watchers of the al-Qaeda terror network find such reports inherently unreliable. "It's trying to make a diagnosis from thousands of miles away with only fragments of the medical chart," says Paul Pillar, former top analyst and deputy director of the CIA's counterterrorism center, who now teaches at Georgetown University. Says Frances Fragos Townsend, who stepped down last November as chief of President George W. Bush's Homeland Security Council, "I've read...
...what it had in mind. "Wouldn't that be a tragic situation if, with all this effort, bin Laden died without it happening at the hands of coalition forces?" says one current senior counterterrorism official. Given the reliability of past long-distance diagnoses, however, and the continuing threat al-Qaeda poses around the world, that may be the least of America's worries...
...about the fourth fugitive, Zulkarnaen. Dubbed "the grandfather" by the Indonesian media because of his seniority, the 44-year-old has virtually vanished and does not appear to be linked to any recent terror plots, says Jones. Although the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center lists Zulkarnaen as one of al-Qaeda's "point men" in Southeast Asia, Jones doubts he is active in the JI leadership. "What's striking is that he doesn't come up in conversations or interrogations. It's as though he is a non-person...
...insistence.) Although aspects of their story are impossible to verify, important details tally with the version of events provided by Iraqi officials in Anbar and by the U.S. military. Sadiya and Shafiqa also allowed TIME to view but not record two video CDS given them by an al-Qaeda fighter. One is Hasna's last statement; the other is a recording of her suicide mission. The picture that emerges is of a once strong woman driven mad with sorrow after the death of her brother Thamer, who in the fall of 2003 joined an insurgent group linked to al-Qaeda...