Bin Laden's Location Sketchy
U.S. Gets Conflicting Intelligence Reports

By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 30, 2001; Page A01

The United States is receiving conflicting intelligence reports about Osama bin Laden's whereabouts that are complicating the Bush administration's efforts to track down the man it blames for this month's terrorist attacks, according to U.S. officials.

According to some reports, bin Laden may have slipped out of Afghanistan and made his way to Somalia, Chechnya or Pakistan's northwest frontier, officials said. Although the CIA is taking the reports seriously, officials say they still believe bin Laden is in Afghanistan, where he has been allowed by the country's ruling Taliban militia to move among mountain redoubts and operate terrorist training camps for the past six years.

Even if their assumption is correct, the administration's apparent inability to establish bin Laden's whereabouts illustrates the difficulties it faces as it tries to hunt down the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks against New York and Washington.

The contradictory reports also suggest that, just as the administration has been promising, the campaign against bin Laden and his al Qaeda network is emerging as one of murkiness and confusion.

The latest example surfaced over the last two days with contradictory reports about possible special forces activity in Afghanistan, which ranged from accounts that British forces were on the ground to one that American forces were hunting bin Laden to one that U.S. forces were in northern Afghanistan, base of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

Yesterday, a television network in Qatar reported that Afghan security forces had captured members of U.S. special forces in Afghanistan, but the Taliban denied the report. The Pentagon declined to comment, in keeping with its official policy of not talking about operational matters. Defense Department officials privately dismissed the report as incorrect.

Several teams of U.S. Army Green Berets, many from the 5th Special Forces Group, are operating in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan -- two former Soviet republics on Afghanistan's northern border -- on what one defense official described as a "liaison" mission. Beyond confirming this fact, Defense Department officials have insisted there are no U.S. special forces in Afghanistan, but have refused to comment further, in effect allowing the contradictory reports about the forces' activity to continue to circulate.

U.S. intelligence has observed bin Laden several times this year, according to sources. Since 1998 the CIA has been authorized to use covert means to disrupt and preempt his operations under a directive signed by President Bill Clinton and reaffirmed by President Bush this year. The 1998 intelligence directives, known formally as presidential findings, were issued after terrorists linked by U.S. officials to bin Laden bombed U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The problem in locating bin Laden illuminates comments by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other officials in the past few days that their efforts remain largely focused on intelligence-gathering. And they may help explain the more measured timetable for any military action adopted by the Pentagon.

"We don't dismiss anything these days," said one senior administration official, noting that bin Laden could have left Afghanistan. "The borders are porous. He's got the means and wherewithal available to him."

But senior administration officials and two former CIA officers familiar with Afghanistan said that bin Laden is most likely still in the southeastern part of the country between Kabul and Khandahar. "The terrain is horrendous, plus if you don't find him soon, you're going to have horrifically bad weather," said Jack Devine, a former CIA operations official who headed the agency's Afghan task force from 1986 to 1987.

In that post, Devine oversaw the last and largest covert operation of the Cold War, when CIA operatives provided mujaheddin fighters -- bin Laden among them -- with Stinger antiaircraft missiles that proved deadly against Soviet MI-24 Hind helicopters and helped drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in 1989.

While crossing the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan would not be difficult, Devine said he finds it hard to believe bin Laden could have left Afghanistan. "I don't think he is someone who can easily turn himself into a little gray man," Devine said. "He is someone who almost by necessity is going to have to travel with people. And there would have to be people receiving him."

Devine also said that the Taliban would most likely be announcing bin Laden's departure from Afghanistan, if he had left. "Why take such a harsh hit," Devine asked, "if you know he's not there." The Taliban has rejected repeated U.S. requests that it surrender bin Laden, and Bush has warned the movement it will share bin Laden's "fate" if it fails to comply.

Another former CIA officer, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that his contacts in Khandahar with ties to the Taliban believe that leaders of the Islamic fundamentalist band know approximately where bin Laden is in the country.

"I think they know where he is generally and maybe even have him under control," said the former agency officer, who served for several years in the region. He added that Pakistani intelligence, which has close ties to the Taliban, may or may not have a sense of bin Laden's location. "The Paks are making a yeoman's effort to defuse this thing and negotiate for us," the former officer said.

The intelligence reports indicating that bin Laden may have left Afghanistan raise the possibility that apprehending him could involve military action in countries far beyond Afghanistan. They also raise the prospect -- however unlikely -- that U.S. forces could be forced to return to Somalia, reviving images of dead U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu at the end of a failed 1993 peacekeeping operation.

Earlier this year, at a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan just blocks from the World Trade Center towers, federal prosecutors alleged that a top bin Laden lieutenant named Muhammad Atef and six other al Qaeda operatives set up training camps in Somalia in 1993 to help Somali tribes oppose a United Nations peacekeeping operation. The U.N. mission was supported by a large U.S. military contingent.

That training culminated in a battle on Oct. 3, 1993, when followers of Somali Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed shot down two Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 U.S. servicemen, the prosecutors said.

The federal prosecutors described bin Laden's links to Somalia during the trial of four al Qaeda operatives convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden and 17 other al Qaeda members have also been indicted in the case.

One government expert on Somalia said it would be a boon to the United States if bin Laden were indeed in that country. "My gut tells me that because of the animosity between various warring factions in Somalia, it wouldn't be a very safe place for him," he said. "We could pay a . . . lot of money to have him taken out."

A former CIA officer who served in Somalia in 1993 said he believes it is possible, but unlikely, that bin Laden would seek refuge in Somalia. "He's got people there who would take care of him," the former officer said. "But what passes for a central government there would hate it, and there would be a foot race to see who would give him up first."

Fleeing to Somalia "may be better than dying," the former officer said, "but it's probably safer that he stay in Afghanistan."

Bin Laden would have little trouble finding supporters in Chechnya, where the Russian government has accused him of supporting Islamic rebels in the secessionist republic in southern Russia. But regional analysts say bin Laden would likely have difficulty traveling there from Afghanistan, and even more trouble evading capture in Chechnya, given the large presence of Russian military forces there.

In northwestern Pakistan, bin Laden is viewed with reverence by Islamic fundamentalists as a symbol of Muslim defiance against the West. The Pakistani city of Peshawar, where many Taliban members received Islamic educations, is home to numerous bin Laden supporters who would guard and shelter him.

Pakistan's intelligence service is known to have close ties to the Taliban and many officers sympathetic to the fundamentalist movement. But with the tumult and political intrigue that characterizes life in Peshawar and other cities and towns in Pakistan's northwest, the odds that someone would tip off either Pakistan's government or go directly to U.S. officials with word of bin Laden's whereabouts would be greatly increased.

Devine, who retired as CIA chief of station in London three years ago, said that bin Laden is known to have access to fortified mountain caves in Afghanistan.

With bin Laden dug in, Devine said, the last thing U.S. special forces would want to do is engage in a search, cave by cave. "You're going to see some nice aerial photography of these camps, but when we were looking for shoot-downs of helicopters and planes, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack," Devine said.