Review shows dramatic shift in Pentagon's thinking
Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon will no longer shape the U.S. military to fight two major conventional wars at once, but rather prepare for numerous conflicts and not all in the same style, according to a draft of a new strategic outlook the Pentagon is announcing on Monday.
The new mantra for military planners will replace the almost 25-year-old combat planning style of fighting and winning two major conventional wars in two different locations in favor of a fighting force that is capable of protecting U.S. interests around the world from a range of threats, from terrorism to cyber attacks.
The change will be addressed in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated document that looks at future threats and the military's requirements to mitigate them.
"It is no longer appropriate to speak of major regional conflicts as the sole or even primary template for sizing, shaping or evaluating U.S. forces," according to a draft first obtained by Inside Defense.
The review will come on the same day the Pentagon presents its 2011 budget.
According to Pentagon officials, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be asking for $708 billion, including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- $44 billion more the 2010 budget of $664 billion.
The last major review was released in 2006 and the Pentagon's view of the world has changed dramatically in the four years since.
The 2006 review was heavily focused on the threat of a large-scale conventional war with China and that country's saber rattling over Taiwan. It also stressed the need for more of and a greater role for special forces troops for use in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 2010 review still stresses the threats from China, but will look at the need to defend against a growing threat of cyber attacks -- without directly tying China to past cyber attacks, according to Pentagon officials -- and China's focus on preemptively striking and crippling an adversary's ability to tell what it will do next ahead of a large attack.
"Prudence demands that future conflicts could involve kinetic and non-kinetic (use of explosive weapons and laser weapons) attacks on space-based surveillance and communications," according to the draft.
The review will put heavy stress on quenching the insatiable need for more unmanned aerial vehicles, including Predator and Reaper, the Air Force's premier UAV's used by the military for both reconnaissance and air strikes. The aircraft are used in Iraq, Afghanistan and over Pakistan and Gates has said the Pentagon needs more.
According to the draft review and U.S. military officials, the Pentagon is looking at building up the number of aircraft in the air over combat zones from about 40 to 50 by 2013 and to 65 by 2015.
"It is no longer appropriate to speak of major regional conflicts as the sole or even primary template for sizing, shaping or evaluating U.S. forces." --2010 Quadrennial Defense Review
The review also stresses learning better and more efficient ways to use the drones by improving operating effectiveness and using new technologies.
The UAV category is just one way the Pentagon is shifting its priorities to position itself for current and future conflicts.
Roadside bombs continue to be the number one killer of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The QDR roadmap continues to recognize the need to protect U.S. troops by enhancing training and intelligence.
Intelligence shows that terrorists have plotted to get their hands on biological, chemical or nuclear material to attempt and attack and the Pentagon foresees weapons of mass destruction to be a continued threat in the future and will push better WMD detection capabilities.
"The Department will expand capabilities to counter WMD threats, strengthen interdiction operations, refocus intelligence requirements, enhance and grow international partnerships and thwart proliferation," the draft says.
While special operations forces (SOF) continue to be a priority from the 2006 QDR, the new review places emphasis on improved support for the elite troops.
That support is expected to include new gunship aircraft to protect the troops during combat missions as well as additional support personnel who would improve intelligence and communications for the SOF troops.
The review will also push for more helicopters, something Gates has said the military never can have enough of. A key tool in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to move troops and equipment safely and faster across those countries, they are also a necessity in humanitarian efforts like those after Hurricane Katrina and most recently for the delivery of aid in Haiti.
With the main military effort focused on Afghanistan, the review says a priority will be put on helicopters there.
"As operations in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan grow in scope and intensity, more rotary wing lift capacity will be needed to ensure that coalition and Afghan forces can be resupplied at remote outposts and effectively cover their areas of responsibility," according to the draft.
But as the Pentagon looks to its new planning for future conflicts, the report also says it can be done in an environmentally responsible way by using more solar power, biofuels and overall energy independence as well as pointing out that the Department of Defense, "provides environmental stewardship" at hundreds of bases around the country.
However, a bigger challenge the Pentagon will face is future conflicts fought around and over reduced resources and environmental catastrophes.
The review calls these climate change scenarios, "accelerant of instability" and suggests the military will have to plan on operations where climate (rising sea levels, reduced ice in the Arctic) would be a factor in planning. In addition to what climate change effects could bring in terms of the spread of disease, mass migration and a scarcity of resources.
The agency builds a case for putting Anwar al Awlaki, linked to the Ft. Hood shootings and Christmas bomb attempt, on its hit list. The complications involved are a window into a secretive process.
Reporting from Washington - The CIA sequence for a Predator strike ends with a missile but begins with a memo. Usually no more than two or three pages long, it bears the name of a suspected terrorist, the latest intelligence on his activities, and a case for why he should be added to a list of people the agency is trying to kill.
The list typically contains about two dozen names, a number that expands each time a new memo is signed by CIA executives on the seventh floor at agency headquarters, and contracts as targets thousands of miles away, in places including Pakistan and Yemen, seem to spontaneously explode.
No U.S. citizen has ever been on the CIA's target list, which mainly names Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, according to current and former U.S. officials. But that is expected to change as CIA analysts compile a case against a Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico but now resides in Yemen.
Anwar al Awlaki poses a dilemma for U.S. counter-terrorism officials. He is a U.S. citizen and until recently was mainly known as a preacher espousing radical Islamic views. But Awlaki's ties to November's shootings at Ft. Hood and the failed Christmas Day airline plot have helped convince CIA analysts that his role has changed.
"Over the past several years, Awlaki has gone from propagandist to recruiter to operational player," said a U.S. counter-terrorism official.
Awlaki's status as a U.S. citizen requires special consideration, according to former officials familiar with the criteria for the CIA's targeted killing program. But while Awlaki has not yet been placed on the CIA list, the officials said it is all but certain that he will be added because of the threat he poses.
"If an American is stupid enough to make cause with terrorists abroad, to frequent their camps and take part in their plans, he or she can't expect their citizenship to work as a magic shield," said another U.S. official. "If you join the enemy, you join your fate to his."
The complications surrounding Awlaki's case provide a rare window into the highly secretive process by which the CIA selects targets.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined to comment, saying that it is "remarkably foolish in a war of this kind to discuss publicly procedures used to identify the enemy, an enemy who wears no uniform and relies heavily on stealth and deception."
Other current and former U.S. officials agreed to discuss the outlines of the CIA's target selection procedures on the condition of anonymity because of their sensitive nature. Some wanted to defend a program that critics have accused of causing unnecessary civilian casualties.
Decisions to add names to the CIA target list are "all reviewed carefully, not just by policy people but by attorneys," said the second U.S. official. "Principles like necessity, proportionality, and the minimization of collateral damage -- to persons and property -- always apply."
The U.S. military, which has expanded its presence in Yemen, keeps a separate list of individuals to capture or kill. Awlaki is already on the military's list, which is maintained by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command. Awlaki apparently survived a Dec. 24 airstrike conducted jointly by U.S. and Yemeni forces.
The CIA has also deployed more operatives and analysts to Yemen. CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes was in the country last month, just weeks before a Nigerian accused of training with Al Qaeda in Yemen boarded a jetliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.
From beginning to end, the CIA's process for carrying out Predator strikes is remarkably self-contained. Almost every key step takes place within the Langley, Va., campus, from proposing targets to piloting the remotely controlled planes.
The memos proposing new targets are drafted by analysts in the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center. Former officials said analysts typically submit several new names each month to high-level officials, including the CIA general counsel and sometimes Director Leon E. Panetta.
Former officials involved in the program said it was handled with sober awareness of the stakes. All memos are circulated on paper, so those granting approval would "have to write their names in ink," said one former official. "It was a jarring thing, to sign off on people getting killed."
The program is governed by extensive procedures and rules, but targeting decisions come down to a single criterion: whether the individual in question is "deemed to be a continuing threat to U.S. persons or interests."
Given that standard, the list mainly comprises Al Qaeda leaders and those seen as playing a direct role in devising or executing attacks. Espousing violence or providing financial support to Al Qaeda would not meet the threshold, officials said. But providing training to would-be terrorists or helping them get to Al Qaeda camps probably would.
The list is scrutinized every six months, officials said, and in some cases names are removed if the intelligence on them has grown stale.
"If someone hadn't popped on the screen for over a year, or there was no intelligence linking him to known terrorists or plans, we'd take him off," the former official said.
The National Security Council oversees the program, which is based on a legal finding signed after the Sept. 11 attacks by then-President George W. Bush. But the CIA is given extensive latitude to execute the program, and generally does not need White House approval when adding names to the target list.
The only exception, officials said, would be when the name is a U.S. citizen's.
The CIA has at times considered adding Americans' names to the target list. None were ever approved, the officials said, not because their citizenship protected them but because they didn't meet the "continuing threat" threshold.
Adam Gadahn, a California native now believed to be hiding in Pakistan, has been indicted on charges of treason and providing support to Al Qaeda. But Gadahn, former officials said, has mainly served in a propaganda role.
Officials said that whether Awlaki is added to the list hinges more on intelligence agencies' understanding of his role than any concern about his status as a U.S. citizen.
"If you are a legitimate military target abroad -- a part of an enemy force -- the fact that you're a U.S. citizen doesn't change that," said Michael Edney, who served as deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council from 2007 until 2009.
Awlaki, 38, was known for delivering fiery sermons at mosques in San Diego and suburban Virginia before moving to Yemen in 2004. Because of his radical online postings, he has been portrayed as a catalyst or motivator in nearly a dozen terrorism cases in the U.S. and abroad.
But it was his involvement in the two recent cases that triggered new alarms. U.S. officials uncovered as many as 18 e-mails between Awlaki and Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major accused of killing 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas. Awlaki also has been tied to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to detonate a bomb on a Detroit-bound flight.
"Awlaki's interested in operations outside of Yemen, and he's trying to recruit more extremists, including Westerners," said the U.S. counter-terrorism official. "His knowledge of Western culture and language makes him valuable to [the offshoot] Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.
"Taking him off the street," the official said of Awlaki, "would deal a blow to the group."
The CIA has carried out dozens of Predator strikes in Pakistan over the last year. The program is not foolproof, as drone strikes often kill multiple people even when the intended target escapes. The CIA has also made grievous mistakes in counter-terrorism operations, including capturing individuals misidentified as terrorism suspects. But the program remains valuable to U.S. officials.
President Obama alluded to the campaign in his State of the Union speech last week, saying that during his first year in office, "hundreds of Al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed -- far more than in 2008."
Many of those strikes were aimed at gatherings of militant groups or training complexes, current and former officials said. In such cases, the CIA is free to fire even if it does not have intelligence indicating the presence of anyone on its target list.
The CIA has carried out Predator attacks in Yemen since at least 2002, when a drone strike killed six suspected Al Qaeda operatives traveling in a vehicle across desert terrain.
The agency knew that one of the operatives was an American, Kamal Derwish, who was among those killed. Derwish was never on the CIA's target list, officials said, and the strike was aimed at a senior Al Qaeda operative, Qaed Sinan Harithi, accused of orchestrating the 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole.
Leader of Pakistani Taliban thought to be dead after U.S. strikes
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- U.S. and Pakistani officials said Sunday that they were growing increasingly confident that the leader of the Pakistani Taliban had died after being wounded in a U.S. missile strike, signaling the possible demise of an insurgent commander notorious for his role in a series of high-profile bombings, including a devastating strike against the CIA.
Pakistani state television broadcast news of Hakimullah Mehsud's death and said he had been buried in the Orakzai tribal agency after succumbing to injuries sustained in a U.S. unmanned aerial strike in mid-January. A senior White House official later said he was "95 percent" certain that Mehsud had been killed. A senior U.S. military official said he also believed Mehsud was dead. But other U.S. officials said the reports still needed to be investigated.
"While I can't confirm reports of Hakimullah's demise, here's to hoping they're true," said a senior U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "This is one of the worst people on the planet."
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the state TV channel had relied on "local sources" in Orakzai, which the government could not confirm. However, Malik told a private TV news station that "the local tribal elders there and the local population say that he has been buried."
The senior army spokesman in Pakistan said military officials were investigating the reports but had not been able to verify them. The Taliban strenuously denied the claims.
If confirmed, Mehsud's death would be the second major blow to the Pakistani Taliban, an Islamist militia based in Pakistan's tribal region, in the past six months. The group's original leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. drone missile attack in August. The drone strikes that apparently targeted Hakimullah Mehsud reflect the growing threat that his organization poses not only to Pakistan, but also to the United States.
Hakimullah Mehsud, believed to be in his late 20s, has been closely associated with al-Qaeda and coordinated with the international terrorist network in launching strikes, including the December attack on a CIA camp in Afghanistan. His leadership of the Pakistani Taliban has been marked by audacious acts of violence and a growing interconnection with other extremist groups across the country. Mehsud has been described as a daredevil driver, a ruthless killer and an articulate advocate for the Pakistani Taliban's strategic goal of waging war against the Pakistani army in order to carve out an ethnic Pashtun Islamic emirate.
Unlike the Afghan Taliban, which focuses its attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban has trained its weapons on Pakistani government, military and civilian sites with the aim of destabilizing this nuclear-armed nation.
Pakistan had once nurtured the Taliban, but since last summer the Pakistani army has mounted a sustained operation against the Pakistani branch of the movement. The Pakistani Taliban is believed to have carried out dozens of suicide attacks across the country, including the bombings of two major hotels, public markets, and a variety of military and police targets.
Although the army drove the Taliban out of the Swat Valley and the South Waziristan tribal area, it has refused to pursue fleeing militants into North Waziristan despite U.S. pressure. Meanwhile, although militant attacks have continued, officials have been attempting to negotiate with the Taliban through tribal elders.
For several years, the United States has for several years been carrying out missile strikes from unmanned aerial vehicles in the semiautonomous tribal region that hugs the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The program, which is not officially acknowledged, has been a major source of controversy in Pakistan, but U.S. and Pakistani officials speaking anonymously have touted its effectiveness in eliminating key al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders.
American drone strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets near the Afghan border intensified after a Dec. 30 suicide bombing in Afghanistan killed five CIA officials, two agency contractors and a Jordanian intelligence officer. The bomber, a Jordanian, made a video before his death in which he was shown with Hakimullah Mehsud and called on Muslims to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud.
Shortly after Baitullah Mehsud's death, Hakimullah Mehsud -- from the same clan as Baitullah but not a close relative -- was reported to have been killed in a squabble over who would take over the Pakistani Taliban. Those reports proved erroneous.
One Pakistani official said Sunday that his government was being careful in announcing death this time because "we don't want to look like fools again." The official said analysis of DNA records would be needed to make a definitive claim.
If Hakimullah Mehsud was killed by the drone strike, the Pakistani Taliban does not lack for potential successors. Both Wali ur-Rehman, the organization's military strategist, and Qari Hussain, who trains suicide bombers, are considered by intelligence officials to be possible heirs.
Hakimullah Mehsud was initially reported to have been killed or wounded in a Jan. 14 drone strike on a militant compound, but he then issued two statements saying he was alive. A second strike, on Jan. 17, that hit two vehicles was also said to have wounded him. There were unconfirmed reports Sunday that tribal elders in Orakzai said he had been taken there and buried four days earlier.
A military intelligence official in South Waziristan, reached by telephone late Sunday, said he had heard reports that Mehsud had died in Orakzai, where he apparently has relatives, after suffering serious injuries. "We are not sure of the reports. Only after getting solid proof can we say something," the official said.
Other sources in the tribal area said another Taliban leader might have been killed, leading to confusion about Mehsud's possible death. The sources also said, however, that if Mehsud were still alive and able to speak, he would probably issue a statement in the next day or two.
A Taliban source, contacted by phone in North Waziristan early Monday, insisted that Mehsud is still alive and expressed annoyance with the repeated reports of his death in recent weeks.
"Some of our friends have seen him," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It is not possible he has been moved to Orakzai because of the drone surveillance. He is somewhere between Mohmand and South Waziristan."
ISLAMABAD (AP) -- The Pakistani army said Sunday that it was investigating reports that Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud died from injuries sustained in a U.S. drone missile strike in mid-January.
The militant leader's death would be an important success for both Pakistan, which has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, and the U.S., which blames Mehsud for a recent deadly bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan.
Mehsud's predecessor was also killed in a missile strike less than six months ago, highlighting the ability of the unmanned aircraft to target Taliban and al-Qaida leaders holed up in Pakistan's lawless tribal area.
The army's disclosure of its investigation came shortly after Pakistani state television, citing unnamed ''official sources,'' reported that Mehsud died in Orakzai, an area in Pakistan's northwest tribal region where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries.
''We have these reports coming to us,'' army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press. ''We are investigating whether it is true or wrong.''
A tribal elder told the AP that he attended Mehsud's funeral in the Mamuzai area of Orakzai on Thursday. He said Mehsud was buried in Mamuzai graveyard after he died at his in-laws' home. The elder spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Taliban.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mehsud was targeted in a U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan on Jan. 14, triggering rumors that he had been injured or killed. The strike targeted a meeting of militant commanders in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan.
Mehsud issued an audio tape after the strike directly denying the rumors, and his voice sounded strong. But Pakistani intelligence officials told the AP on Sunday that they have confirmation that the Taliban chief's legs and abdomen were wounded in the strike.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Pakistani Taliban officials were not immediately available for comment, but low-level fighters have dismissed rumors of Mehsud's death in recent days as propaganda.
The drone strike that targeted Mehsud came about two weeks after a deadly suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees at a remote base across the border in Afghanistan. Mehsud appeared in a video issued after the bombing sitting beside the Jordanian man who carried out the attack.
The bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, said he carried out the attack in retribution for the death of former Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud -- Hakimullah Mehsud's predecessor -- in a U.S. drone strike last August.
The U.S. refuses to talk about the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan but officials have said privately that the strikes have killed several senior Taliban and al-Qaida leaders.
Pakistani officials publicly protest the strikes as violations of the country's sovereignty, but U.S. officials say privately they support the program, especially when it targets militants like Mehsud who the government believes is a threat to the state.
Mehsud, who has the reputation as a particularly ruthless militant, took over leadership of the Pakistani Taliban soon after Baitullah Mehsud's death.
The 28 year-old militant leader has focused most of his attacks against targets inside Pakistan, but his men have also been blamed for attacking U.S. and NATO supply convoys traveling through the country en route to Afghanistan.
Hakimullah Mehsud first appeared in public to journalists in November 2008, when he offered to take reporters in Orakzai on a ride in a U.S. Humvee taken from a supply truck headed to Afghanistan. He was the Pakistani Taliban's regional commander in the Orakzai, Khyber and Mohmand tribal areas before taking over the organization.
He has taken responsibility for a wave of brazen strikes inside Pakistan, including the bombing of the Pearl Continental hotel in the northwestern city of Peshawar last June and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier that year. There is a 50 million rupee ($590,000) bounty on his head.
The Pakistani Taliban stepped up its attacks after the army invaded its stronghold of South Waziristan in mid-October. More than 600 people have been killed in attacks throughout the country since the ground offensive was launched.
Pakistani officials have said some of the militants have fled to neighboring North Waziristan, an area dominated by groups launching cross-border attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
The army struck deals with the leaders of two of those groups, Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir, before it invaded South Waziristan, promising not to target the militants if they stayed on the sidelines.
An umbrella group that includes the two militants and the Pakistani Taliban issued a pamphlet in North Waziristan on Sunday accusing the government of violating the agreement and warning it would trigger a major war if it launched any kind of military operation in the area.
The pamphlet issued by the Shura-e-Ittehad-ul-Mujahedeen, or Council of United Holy Warriors, said the government violated the agreement in various ways, including by creating a network of spies in North Waziristan who helped the U.S. kill militants in drone attacks.
''We have tolerated all sorts of mistreatment, but now we are not going to accept any kind of military operation in even our smallest area,'' said the pamphlet, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.
The Pakistani army has said it cannot launch another major operation for at least six months, but it has carried out two strikes in North Waziristan in the past two weeks.
''Westerners have some regard for civilians and they do distinguish between Taliban fighters and civilians, but the Pakistani army doesn't,'' said the pamphlet in a rare admission for a militant group. ''Instead of the Taliban, it is bombing ordinary people's homes and their bazaars and killing innocent people.''
Pakistan Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud dead, says state television
Pakistan's military trying to verify reports that Taliban leader, who had been targeted by drone attacks, has been killed
Pakistan's military said it was scrambling to confirm a report on state television that the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, has been killed.
The report said Mehsud, a target of CIA-directed drone attacks over the past month, has already been buried. The source of the information was not clear.
The main army spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, told the Guardian the army was trying to verify the report. "We don't have any confirmation yet," he said, adding that the PTV information did not come from "any state agency".
An elder in the Mamuzai area of Orakzai tribal agency said he attended Mehsud's funeral on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, the elder said Mehsud died at his in-laws' home.
A Reuters report, quoting a Pakistani intelligence official, said the Taliban leader may have been fatally wounded following a 17 January drone attack on two vehicles in North Waziristan.
Mehsud's fate has been the subject of intense speculation since a drone attack on 13 January on a remote madrasa on the border between South and North Waziristan.
A Taliban spokesman admitted that Mehsud had been present in the building moments earlier, but insisted he left before the American missile struck.
Days later Mehsud quelled rumours of his demise by phoning several Pakistani journalists in Peshawar. But he was apparently targeted a second time in a drone strike on two vehicles in North Waziristan on 17 January.
Unconfirmed reports since then have suggested Hakimullah was seriously injured in that strike and was shifted to his former stomping ground of Orakzai tribal agency for treatment.
The US has carried out drone attacks in the tribal belt over the past month. The salvo seems to have been triggered by the 30 December suicide bombing of a CIA base in southern Afghanistan that killed seven Americans spies, including the base chief.
A posthumous video released later showed the bomber, a Jordanian doctor, sitting alongside Hakimullah Mehsud, indicating that the Pakistani Taliban played a leading role in the CIA's greatest humiliation for decades.
The drone strikes are highly contentious in Pakistan, where they are viewed with naked hostility by the general public and as a necessary evil by the military.
Asked whether he was happy about the prospect of an American drone killing a Pakistani militant leader, Abbas said: "I would be happier if he had been killed by our own security forces."
The head of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. drone attack, Pakistan state television reported Sunday.
The report stated Mehsud had been injured in a drone attack in the Shaktoi area January 14 and died three days later. He reportedly was buried in the village of Mamuzai in the North Waziristan region.
The Pakistani army said Sunday that it was investigating the reports.
The militant leader's death would be an important success for both Pakistan, which has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, and the U.S., which blames Mehsud for a recent deadly bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan.
The army's announcement came shortly after Pakistani state television, citing unnamed "official sources," reported that Mehsud died in Orakzai, an area in Pakistan's northwest tribal region where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries.
"We have these reports coming to us," army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press. "We are investigating whether it is true or wrong."
A tribal elder told the AP that he attended Mehsud's funeral in the Mamuzai area of Orakzai on Thursday. He said Mehsud was buried in Mamuzai graveyard after he died at his in-laws' home. The elder spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Taliban.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mehsud was targeted in a U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan on Jan. 14, triggering rumors that he had been injured or killed. The strike targeted a meeting of militant commanders in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan.
Mehsud issued two audio tapes after the strike denying the rumors. But Pakistani intelligence officials told the AP on Sunday that they have confirmation that the Taliban chief's legs and abdomen were wounded in the strike.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Pakistani Taliban officials were not immediately available for comment, but low-level fighters have dismissed rumors of Mehsud's death in recent days as propaganda.
The drone strike that targeted Mehsud came about two weeks after a deadly suicide bombing he helped orchestrate killed seven CIA employees at a remote base across the border in Afghanistan. Mehsud appeared in a video issued after the bombing sitting beside the Jordanian man who carried out the attack.
The bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, said he carried out the attack in retribution for the death of former Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud — Hakimullah Mehsud's predecessor — in a U.S. drone strike last August.
The U.S. refuses to talk about the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan but officials have said privately that the strikes have killed several senior Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.
Pakistani officials publicly protest the strikes as violations of the country's sovereignty, but U.S. officials say privately they support the program, especially when it targets militants like Mehsud who the government believes is a threat to the state.
Mehsud, who has the reputation as a particularly ruthless militant, took over leadership of the Pakistani Taliban soon after Baitullah Mehsud's death.
The 28 year-old militant leader has focused most of his attacks against targets inside Pakistan, but his men have also been blamed for attacking U.S. and NATO supply convoys traveling through the country en route to Afghanistan.
Hakimullah Mehsud first appeared in public to journalists in November 2008, when he offered to take reporters in Orakzai on a ride in a U.S. Humvee taken from a supply truck headed to Afghanistan. He was the Pakistani Taliban's regional commander in the Orakzai, Khyber and Mohmand tribal areas before taking over the organization.
He has taken responsibility for a wave of brazen strikes inside Pakistan, including the bombing of the Pearl Continental hotel in the northwestern city of Peshawar last June and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier that year.
The group stepped up its attacks after the Pakistani army invaded its stronghold of South Waziristan in mid-October. More than 600 people have been killed in attacks throughout the country since the ground offensive was launched.
Authorities have said Mehsud has been behind threats to foreign embassies in Islamabad, and there is a $120,000 bounty on his head.
...The frustrations at the top are understandable. There is a certain desperate quality to the hunt for bin Laden. Some experts think he's constantly on the move; others believe he must be holed up somewhere, never using electronics, impossible to detect. After the close call in 2004, says Omar Farooqi, "the Sheik" shrank his security staff and employed only faithful Arabs. A Western military official who has worked both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border told NEWSWEEK that bin Laden may have deployed small groups of bodyguards spread along the frontier with the same "signature": small security detail, secretive, saying little to local villagers, always moving on. That's a perfect disinformation campaign, says the official. The nearby locals start whispering that bin Laden must be nearby. "Word gets around that it must have been him," he says. "We react. It throws us off the trail and makes us waste assets following bad leads. And it's a cheap and easy way to do."
No wonder the intelligence community is reaching out to anyone who can glean even a hint of bin Laden's whereabouts. As early as November 2001, John Shroder, a geographer at the University of Nebraska, found himself addressing an audience of intelligence officials, analyzing the rock formations behind bin Laden in a video released that October. About all he could do was tell the spooks that bin Laden seemed to be in the western part of Afghanistan's Spin Ghar Mountains. "We were grasping at straws," says Michael Scheuer, who was special adviser to the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit at the time. "We called in geologists. We had the Germans bring in ornithologists because they thought they heard a bird chirping on a video and wanted to see if it was particular to certain regions of South Asia." The agency enlisted doctors to look for signs of kidney disease, which bin Laden was rumored to be suffering from at the time. A Dec. 27, 2001, video, nicknamed by analysts "the Gaunt Tape," shows a haggard-looking bin Laden, who seems to be unable to move his left arm. "But the doctors couldn't pinpoint any problems with his health," says Scheuer.
CIA analysts began calling bin Laden "Elvis" because he was here, there, but really nowhere. Some wonder if he's dead. He has not issued a video since the end of 2004, and he has not been heard on an audiotape for more than a year. It is possible he is incapacitated by disease—the rumors of kidney problems persist. There have been reports that bin Laden has sought medication to be used in the terminal stages of kidney disease. But "I don't have any reason to think he's dead," says Townsend, who sees all the intelligence coming to the office of the president. "It's inconceivable to me to think that he would expire and we wouldn't have some information, intelligence, that something had happened to him."
If he is alive, there is no doubt he means to kill as many Americans as possible. "The Sheik's desire is to strike another blow at the palaces of the West," says Sheik Said, the senior Egyptian Qaeda leader. In 2003, Scheuer points out, bin Laden even managed to gain religious sanction from a radical Saudi cleric to kill "no more than 10 million Americans" with a nuclear or biological weapon.
America remains his obsession. NEWSWEEK interviewed Nasser al Bahri, who served as bin Laden's personal bodyguard for six years. Now under very loose house arrest in Yemen, the former bodyguard still reveres "the Sheik." According to al Bahri, bin Laden used to amuse himself by chanting this bit of doggerel, part of a longer poem by a jihadist poet:
I am the enemy of America
Till this life is over and doomsday comes.
It's the root and trunk of destruction,
It's the evil on the branches of trees.
"The only thing that seems to rile him up is mention of America," says al Bahri. "I think from the very beginning of his childhood he hated America. I don't know why. He won't even drink a Pepsi."
Bin Laden's No. 2, Zawahiri, is just as baleful toward the United States. According to various accounts, it was Zawahiri, a well-educated Egyptian doctor, who before 9/11 persuaded bin Laden to turn his terrorist ambitions from the "near enemy" (the corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt) to the "far enemy" (the United States). Zawahiri may represent more of a threat to the West than bin Laden. By taking himself off the grid, bin Laden may no longer be in operational control; capturing him might be more symbolic than significant. But meanwhile Zawahiri has become more visible. "In the past two years he has put out more than 30 messages," says Rita Katz, director and founder of the SITE Institute, which monitors jihadist Web sites. She notes that within hours of the storming of the Red Mosque by Pakistani forces, Zawahiri's response was uploaded on the Internet. "I believe he's in or near an urban area where he is able to get news and respond to issues quickly," says Katz. "In 2005, you'd still see videos with cheap fabric backdrops that rippled in the wind. Today, they seem to be using better equipment, complete with artificial backgrounds added postproduction." "Al Qaeda may have seventh-century ideas, but they have 21st-century acumen for communications," says Georgetown University terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman. "Al Qaeda has become a world brand and their videos are the juice that fueled that recognition."
The Americans were getting close. It was early in the winter of 2004–05, and Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, a sentry, posted several kilometers away, spotted a patrol of U.S. soldiers who seemed to be heading straight for bin Laden's redoubt. The sentry radioed an alert, and word quickly passed among the Qaeda leader's 40-odd bodyguards to prepare to remove "the Sheik," as bin Laden is known to his followers, to a fallback position. As Sheik Said, a senior Egyptian Qaeda operative, later told the story, the anxiety level was so high that the bodyguards were close to using the code word to kill bin Laden and commit suicide. According to Said, bin Laden had decreed that he would never be captured. "If there's a 99 percent risk of the Sheik's being captured, he told his men that they should all die and martyr him as well," Said told Omar Farooqi, a Taliban liaison officer to Al Qaeda who spoke to a NEWSWEEK reporter in Afghanistan.
The secret word was never given. As the Qaeda sentry watched the U.S. troops, the patrol started moving in a different direction. Bin Laden's men later concluded that the soldiers had nearly stumbled on their hideout by accident. (One former U.S. intelligence officer told NEWSWEEK that he was aware of official reporting on this incident.)
And so it has gone for six years. American intelligence officials interviewed by NEWSWEEK RUEFULLY agree that the hunt to find bin Laden has been more a game of chance than good or "actionable" intelligence. Since bin Laden slipped away from Tora Bora in December 2001, U.S. intelligence has never had better than a 50-50 certainty about his whereabouts. "There hasn't been a serious lead on Osama bin Laden since early 2002," says Bruce Riedel, who recently retired as a South Asia expert at the CIA. "What we're doing now is shooting in the dark in outer space. The chances of hitting anything are zero."
How can that be? With all its spy satellites and aerial drones, killer commandos and millions in reward money, why can't the world's greatest superpower find a middle-aged, possibly ill, religious fanatic with a medieval mind-set? The short answer, sometimes overlooked, is that good, real-time intelligence about the enemy is hard to come by in any war, and manhunts are almost always difficult, especially if the fugitive can vanish into a remote region with a sympathetic population. (Think how long—five years—it took the FBI to track down Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympic bomber, in the wilds of North Carolina.) That said, the U.S. government has made the job harder than necessary. The Iraq War drained resources from the hunt, and some old bureaucratic bugaboos—turf battles and fear of risk—undermined the effort. The United States can't just barge into Pakistan without upsetting, and possible dooming, President Pervez Musharraf, who seems to lurch between trying to appease his enemies and riling them with heavy-handed repression.
The story of the search for the men known to American spies and soldiers as high-value targets one and two (HVT 1 and HVT 2)—Osama bin Laden and his possibly more dangerous No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri—is a frustrating, at times agonizing, tale of missed opportunities, damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't choices, and outright blunders. It has been related to NEWSWEEK by dozens of American, Pakistani and Afghan military and intelligence officials, as well as a few Qaeda sympathizers like Omar Farooqi. Capturing bin Laden "continues to be a huge priority," says Frances Fragos Townsend, President George W. Bush's chief counterterror adviser. It may be true, as Townsend points out, that Qaeda leaders do not have anything like the safe haven they enjoyed in Afghanistan before 9/11. But it is also true that Al Qaeda has been reconstituting itself in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that the terrorist organization is determined to stage more 9/11s, and maybe soon. "We have very strong indicators that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the West and is likely to attack, and we are pretty sure about that," says retired Vice Adm. John Redd, chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, which coordinates all U.S. intelligence in the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT). Hank Crumpton, who ran the CIA's early hunt for bin Laden in 2001–02 as deputy chief of the agency's counterterrorism center and recently retired as the State Department's coordinator of counterterrorism, says, "It's bad; it's going to come."
Before 9/11, the hunt for bin Laden was marked by a certain tentativeness, an official reluctance to suck America into the dirty business of political assassination or to get U.S. troops killed. Within days after 9/11, President Bush was vowing to capture bin Laden "dead or alive," and Cofer Black, the CIA's counterterror chief at the time, was ordering his troops to bring back bin Laden's head "in a box." (In fact, CIA operatives in Afghanistan requested a box and dry ice, just in case.) With old-fashioned derring-do, CIA case officers, carrying millions of dollars, choppered into Afghanistan to work with tribesmen to drive out Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts. The CIA's alacrity caused some heartburn at the Pentagon. According to Bob Woodward's "Bush at War," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld steamed impatiently while the military seemed to dither, stymied by weather and fussing with complex backup and rescue arrangements before the brass would commit any troops.
...
Bin Laden was not so much seeking refuge as coming home when he disappeared into the jagged peaks along the frontier of northwest Pakistan. He had always liked hunting and horseback riding in the mountains, and had even built himself a crude swimming pool with a spectacular view near Tora Bora. Though a wealthy Saudi, bin Laden had long since learned to live close to the ground, abjuring his followers to learn to survive without modern comforts like plumbing or air conditioning.
Local Pashtun tribesmen were not about to turn bin Laden in for a reward, even a $25 million one. The strictly observed custom of defending guests, part of an ancient honor code called Pashtunwali, insulated Al Qaeda.
...The American effort to chase bin Laden into this forbidding realm was hobbled and clumsy from the start. While the terrain required deep local knowledge and small units, career officers in the U.S. military have long been wary of the Special Operations Forces best suited to the task. In the view of the regular military, such "snake eaters" have tended to be troublesome, resistant to spit-and-polish discipline and rulebooks. Rather than send the snake eaters to poke around mountain caves and mud-walled compounds, the U.S. military wanted to fight on a grander stage, where it could show off its mobility and firepower. To the civilian bosses at the Pentagon and the eager-to-please top brass, Iraq was a much better target.
...By early 2002, new Predators—aerial drones that might have helped the search for bin Laden—were instead being diverted off the assembly line for possible use in Iraq. The military's most elite commando unit, Delta Force, was transferred from Afghanistan to prep for the invasion of Iraq. The Fifth Special Forces Group, including the best Arabic speakers, was sent home to retool for Iraq, replaced by the Seventh Special Forces Group—Spanish speakers with mostly Latin American experience. The most knowledgeable CIA case officers, the ones with tribal contacts, were rotated out. Replacing a fluent Arabic speaker and intellectual, the new CIA station chief in Kabul was a stickler for starting meetings on time (his own watch was always seven minutes fast) but allowed that he had read only one book on Afghanistan. One slightly bitter spook, speaking anonymously to NEWSWEEK to protect his identity, likened the station chief to Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny." (CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano insists "station chiefs go through a rigorous, multistep selection process, designed to get leaders with the right skills in the right places.")
The frustrations of the snake eaters are well illustrated by the recollections of Adam Rice, the operations sergeant of a Special Forces A-Team working out of a safe house near Kandahar in 2002. With his close-cropped orange hair and beard, wearing a yellow Hawaiian shirt around the safe house, Rice was not the sort to shine at inspections at boot camp. But he had lived in Kabul as a child (his father had been a USAID worker) and he had been a Special Forces operator for more than two decades. In July 2002, a CIA case officer told Rice that a figure believed to be Mullah Omar, the one-eyed chief of the Taliban, had been tracked by aerial drone to a location in the Shahikot Valley, a short flight to the north. The Taliban chief and his entourage would be vulnerable to a helicopter assault, but the Americans had to move quickly.
Rice was not optimistic about getting timely permission. Whenever he and his men moved within five kilometers of the safe house, he says, they had to file a request form known as a 5-W, spelling out the who, what, when, where and why of the mission. Permission from headquarters took hours, and if shooting might be involved, it was often denied. To go beyond five kilometers required a CONOP (for "concept of operations") that was much more elaborate and required approval from two layers in the field, and finally the Joint Special Operations Task Force at Baghram air base near Kabul. To get into a fire fight, the permission of a three-star general was necessary. "That process could take days," Rice recalled to NEWSWEEK. He often typed forms while sitting on a 55-gallon drum his men had cut in half to make a toilet seat. "We'd be typing in 130-degree heat while we're crapping away with bacillary dysentery and sometimes the brass at Kandahar or Baghram would kick back and tell you the spelling was incorrect, that you weren't using the tab to delimit the form correctly."
But Rice made his request anyway. Days passed with no word. The window closed; the target—whether Mullah Omar or not—moved on. Rice blames risk aversion in career officers, whose promotions require spotless ("zero defect") records—no mistakes, no bad luck, no "flaps." The cautious mind-set changed for a time after 9/11, but quickly settled back in. High-tech communication serves to clog, rather than speed the process. With worldwide satellite communications, high-level commanders back at the base or in Washington can second-guess even minor decisions.
In Pakistan, President Musharraf was wary of his American allies in the War on Terror. In 2002, he told a high-ranking British official: "My great concern is that one day the United States is going to desert me. They always desert their friends." According to this official, who declined to be identified sharing a confidence, Musharraf cited the U.S. pullouts from Vietnam in the 1970s, Lebanon in the 1980s and Somalia in the 1990s. Still, he quickly gave the Americans considerable leeway to operate inside Pakistan. He did not demand prior approval of Predator attacks, and he allowed "hot pursuit" for American forces five kilometers or more inside the border. (With a grim laugh, one U.S. officer interviewed by NEWSWEEK recalled watching on Predator video as insurgents fled across the border and stopped on what they thought was safe terrain—until a U.S. Special Ops helo reared up and blasted them.) Musharraf told the Americans he understood that they would do what they had to do to attack high-value targets, although he indicated the Pakistanis might have to issue pro forma denunciations. His one request, said a U.S. official who dealt directly with the Pakistani leader, was that bin Laden not be captured alive and be brought to trial in Pakistan.
CIA officials at Langley were anxiously watching their flank. At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, vexed by the CIA's inability to provide actionable intel, had been pushing to get Special Forces into clandestine operations and gathering of human intelligence (HUMINT). Under an "execute order" approved by President Bush in July 2005, the Pentagon identified 350 Qaeda targets globally, including senior leaders, recruiters, financiers and couriers, according to a high-ranking Defense official who, like others quoted anonymously in this story, did not wish to be identified revealing such matters. The CIA naturally resisted this invasion of its turf. Congressmen and ambassadors grumbled that they were being kept in the dark about the military's black ops.
The Defense official claims that "the Horn of Africa has been a fruitful place" for missions. But when it came to going after the top Qaeda leadership along the Pakistan border, the military was still dogged by poor intelligence and risk aversion. These two chronic failings combined to undo what may have been America's best shot at killing or capturing some top Qaeda leaders since the escape at Tora Bora.
In late 2005, the CIA and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command came up with intelligence that gave them "80 percent confidence" that either Zawahiri, bin Laden's longtime sidekick, or another of bin Laden's highest-ranking lieutenants would be attending a meeting in a small compound just inside Pakistan along its northern border with Afghanistan. "This was the best intelligence picture we had ever seen" about a so-called HVT, said a former intelligence official who was involved in the operation. The spooks and Special Operations Forces planned an airborne commando raid that could have been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Some 30 U.S. Navy SEALs were to be flown by C-130 transport planes, under cover of darkness, to a spot high above the Afghan side of the Pakistan border, about 30 to 40 miles away from the target. The SEALs would jump from the plane and use parasails—motorized hang gliders—to fly through the night sky, across the mountains, to a secret staging point close to the compound. They would attack the target and capture Zawahiri or whatever other HVTs were on the premises, killing them only if necessary. The SEALs would then spirit their captives away to another staging point, where two CH-53 helicopters awaited to airlift them back to Afghanistan.
The plan was enthusiastically endorsed by the then CIA Director Porter Goss and JSOC Commander Stanley McChrystal, who was a major at the time. But when the Pentagon's civilian leadership, including Rumsfeld and his principal intelligence adviser, Under Secretary Steve Cambone, pored over the plan, they began raising questions. Was the intelligence good enough to justify the risk to U.S. troops and the possible blowback on Musharraf if the mission went bad? "Can't you get the confidence up to 100 percent?" Pentagon officials asked their CIA counterparts, eliciting frustrated eye-rolling in return, according to the former intelligence officer interviewed by NEWSWEEK. According to a former Defense official close to Rumsfeld, a familiar Pentagon planning maxim had already kicked in: the more uncertain the intelligence, the more precautions the military wants to take. The top brass was asking, were two helicopters really sufficient to extract the SEALs? What if one was shot down or had mechanical problems? Images of the failed 1980 Iranian hostage-rescue mission came to mind. Or Rangers fighting their way through Mogadishu to rescue trapped commandos in the 1993 fiasco known as Blackhawk Down. In order to bolster the rescue part of the plan, JSOC proposed sending in teams of Army Rangers to add security. As discussions continued, the size of the Ranger team grew to 150, about five times the size of the initial commando force.
To Rumsfeld, the operations began to seem more and more like an invasion of Pakistan. Musharraf would have to be consulted, or at least informed. But did that mean his unreliable intelligence service, the ISI, would leak the plan to Al Qaeda? The official close to Rumsfeld says that the SecDef became increasingly wary as he weighed potential risk against reward.
But time was of the essence. The C-130s were circling over the border, the SEALs were ready to jump, while Rumsfeld was still deliberating with the top brass. CIA Director Goss went to the Pentagon to implore him to go ahead. At the last minute Rumsfeld called off the raid. "Believe me, if this had been easy and there were certainty, we'd have done this," says the former Rumsfeld adviser. "There just wasn't certainty."
Certainty is painfully hard to achieve in this hunt, despite America's enormous technological edge. American spy satellites, designed for the cold war against the Soviets, don't have antennas sensitive enough to pick up cell-phone or handheld radio transmissions. So Special Ops teams—known as Task Force Orange—have slipped into the tribal areas to plant listening devices on various peaks. The listening posts have been useful, in several cases pinpointing the locations of Qaeda operatives. But the jihadists have adapted, and use codes to disguise the kind of actionable information the hunters need.
The common saying among intelligence and Special Ops officers is that all the thugs have been killed by now—but the smart guys have survived, and become smarter. Predators have scored some hits, including killing Abu Hamza Rabia, another Qaeda operations chief (al-Libbi's successor), in 2005. (To cloak American involvement, the Pakistani government cooked up the story that Rabia had blown himself up experimenting with explosives.) But the jihadists have learned to avoid the drones: it's easier to hear a Predator, which sounds like a loud model airplane, in the Pakistani hill country than in an Iraqi city. And when the Americans shoot and miss, the consequences can be grave. In January 2006, a Predator fired a Hellfire missile at a house in Damadola, Pakistan, where Zawahiri was supposed to be meeting. Once again, the intel was unreliable: Zawahiri was not there, but more than a dozen civilians were killed, and the survivors were enraged.
By 2006, Musharraf was weary. American focus on Afghanistan was fading; the war in the territories was costly in terms of lives and public sentiment; the jihadists were starting to spill into the cities. The president of Pakistan decided to cut his losses, and in September 2006, his local governor signed a peace deal with tribal militants.
...When the United States struck Afghanistan in 2001, "there were probably 3,000 core Al Qaeda operatives," says Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School. "We killed or captured about 1,000; about 1,000 more ended up in distant parts of the world. And about 1,000 ended up in Waziristan. But the great terror university in Afghanistan is gone; they've relied on the Web since. They haven't had the hands-on instruction and the bonding of the camps. That's resulted in low-skill levels. Their tradecraft is really much poorer."
The danger now, says Arquilla, is that the longer the Iraq War goes on, the more skilled the new generations of jihadists will become. "They're getting re-educated," he says. "The first generation of Al Qaeda came through the [Afghan] camps. The second generation are those who've logged on [to Islamist Web sites]. The next generation will be those who have come through the crucible of Iraq. Eventually, their level of skill is going to be greater than the skill of the original generation."
It is disturbing to recall that when U.S. forces overran Qaeda training grounds, they found scientific documents discussing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. (Zawahiri is reported to have a particular interest in chem-bio.) A true weapon of mass destruction is very hard to come by, and it may be a while before the jihadists can make, steal or buy a nuclear weapon or a germ bomb capable of killing more than a few people. But dirty bombs are less difficult to craft from conventional explosives and radioactive material, the kind that can be found in the waste bins of hospitals. Crumpton recalls that Zawahiri canceled a planned attack to set off a cyanide bomb in the New York City subways in 2003. "We don't know why," says Crumpton, or what became of the team Al Qaeda recruited to stage the attack but apparently never dispatched to the United States. "You think: Why did he call it off? Where are they?"
Intelligence officials in Europe and America have spent a jittery summer seeing signs that Al Qaeda is gearing up to hit the West in some significant way. In his interview with NEWSWEEK, Admiral Redd of the National Counterterrorism Center was guarded about details. But it was clear from his comments that the terror watchers are seeing signs and hearing chatter that have put them on alert. For an attack on Europe? America? "They would like to come west, and they would like to come as far west as they can," is how Redd puts it. The intelligence community lacks specific information about the movements of terrorists, he said. "What we do have, though, is a couple of threads which indicate, you know, some very tactical stuff, and that's what—you know, that's what you're seeing bits and pieces of, and I really can't go much more into it."
Meanwhile, the hunt for bin Laden goes on. Recently, it has gone all the way back to the beginning—to the Tora Bora region. This summer, about 500 jihadists—Taliban and Al Qaeda, increasingly indistinguishable—infiltrated the area. After three American Special Forces soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in early August, the Americans launched a sweep of bin Laden's old hideout, backed by aerial strikes. Last week a NEWSWEEK reporter, led by a guide, hiked up into the mountains to visit the battlefield.
On the way up, they passed small convoys of American Humvees and Afghan National ArmyFord Ranger pickups. Along the trail, past a few dozen unmarked Arab graves from the 2001 bombing, they saw bits of shrapnel, corroded bullets and scraps of military detritus, some of it quite old. Leaflets blew around. They warned the locals that American troops would hunt down people who sheltered terrorists. On the leaflets were garish pictures of evil-looking masked men with glaring white eyes; one had the word OSAMA in a red circle with a diagonal slash through it.
Only a small minority of Muslims are attracted to radical jihadism. But a lot of Muslims like the idea of standing up to Bush and the Western influence he symbolizes. They're up against the most ferocious military machine in the history of mankind, and they're winning. They believe their fighting has reversed the last several centuries of Middle East history and that they're on the verge of victory. Riedel calls the phenomenon "extremist triumphalism." The phrase could just as easily apply to Bush. It's the kind of thinking that distorts reality, and makes for a long, hot summer.
Eric Rudolph Evaded Capture For Five Long Years In The Woods Of Western North Carolina. A Fugitive's Survival Strategy
For the first few years on the lam, alone in the North Carolina woods and fearful of being discovered, Eric Robert Rudolph claims he lived off the fat of the land. He moved around constantly, surviving on a diet of acorns and salamanders. "I just swallowed them whole, like sushi," he bragged to police officers who held him after his arrest last week. Sgt. Lester White, a detention officer with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department, spent hours talking with Rudolph during his initial days in custody. White told NEWSWEEK that Rudolph, accused of setting off deadly bombs at abortion clinics, a gay club and the 1996 Olympics, was surprisingly forthcoming about his five years running from the law. He asked for a Bible and fresh fruit, and regaled his captors with stories of life as a fugitive. Though authorities are searching his former hiding spots to determine if he had help along the way, Rudolph gave the impression that he was always alone. At times, he claimed, the solitude got to him. He said he hadn't been with a woman in so many years, even "the bears started looking good."
His lawyers may soon wish he had kept quiet just a little longer. Rudolph is now in a jail cell in Birmingham, Ala., where he will stand trial for the 1998 bombing of a women's clinic that killed an off-duty police officer. (He'll then be shipped off to Atlanta for the Olympics bombing trial.) Richard Jaffe, one of his court-appointed attorneys, insists that Rudolph is innocent, and says that he has been unfairly portrayed as an anti- government militant and Christian extremist. "We intend to challenge that, right now and throughout," he told reporters. Rudolph's flight, he says, shouldn't be taken as a sign of guilt. "There are all kinds of reasons why people get scared and run and hide. I don't know what I would do if I was the subject of a nationwide manhunt."
In his jailhouse ruminations, Rudolph--who did not admit to any crime--described in detail how he went to great lengths to avoid capture. According to Sergeant White, Rudolph said he eventually began hunting deer, bear and turkeys, using a .223-caliber rifle. He rarely fished in the abundant creeks, he said, because he feared that the roar of the rushing water would drown out the sounds of approaching footsteps. In the winters he wore boots, in the summers, running shoes. He made occasional trips to the nearby town of Andrews to steal corn and soybeans. He scrounged for books to pass the hours (found at one of his campsites: "Incident at Big Sky: The True Story of Sheriff Johnny France and the Capture of the Mountain Men"). "He had to look at it just like it was a long, long camping trip," says White, paraphrasing Rudolph.
There were close calls. Rudolph said one day he was perched atop a grain bin when a group of hunters with a dog passed nearby. The dog began trotting over toward him--only to be hit by a car. Another time, he said, he fell into an icy creek and had to build a fire to dry his clothes.
Those who spoke with Rudolph during his custody in North Carolina said he seemed as though he'd grown weary of life alone in the mountains, and had started taking risks. He made more frequent trips into town to pick through trash cans behind supermarkets and fast-food joints. "He said there was nothing better than a half-eaten taco," recalls one officer. Some have speculated that Rudolph eventually resigned himself to capture. White wondered the same thing himself, and asked Rudolph straight out: after all he'd been through, was he relieved it was finally over? The former fugitive, who may face the death penalty in two states, had a blunt, simple answer: no.
He may have prayed for an apocalyptic race war, but in the end Eric Rudolph was just another neighbor - quiet, unobtrusive, slightly strange.
For months, maybe years, the fugitive hid near a small valley of brick houses and trailers, leading a life so reclusive he was nearly invisible - though neighbors suggest it wasn't just the chipmunks stealing all that squash from their gardens.
"In retrospect, it doesn't bother me," says Mary Pickens, who lives nearby. "He hadn't ever hurt anyone around here."
Since Mr. Rudolph's capture by a rookie cop on Saturday, this mountain town is coming to grips with the ghost in its midst, wondering how the alleged terrorist went undetected - and whether he was helped by some of their own.
Rudolph, painted by some as a modern Daniel Boone, apparently needed them. While evading a dogged five-year manhunt, he clung to the fringes of society in a neat ridge-top camp only 200 yards from two strip malls and the high school - and a half-mile from Murphy's blue-marble courthouse. In winter, he could likely see the town from his camp; in summer, he could have heard the roar of trucks on the Appalachian Highway.
Instead of retreating into the deep mountains or urban anonymity, he stayed in a "comfort zone" at the edge of society. Experts say that choice shows Rudolph's limits as a survivalist, but also a distaste for total isolation - and, perhaps, a need to stay close to a network of conspirators.
"I don't believe he was a good survivalist," says Kevin Reeve, director of the Tom Brown Tracking School in Asbury, N.J., who's studied the Rudolph case. "The analogy is of a scuba diver who's fine until his oxygen supply runs out - and then he has to come up for air." A real survivalist, says Mr. Reeve, would have taken off up through the Great Smokies.
Instead, Rudolph, with his "Regular Joe" looks, crossed a few ridges from Natahala Gorge, where the FBI found his truck five years ago, and planted himself in Murphy, a community that was changing from a close-knit town of jean-factory and saw-mill workers to a bustling retirement destination for Floridians.
Murphy may have been a logical choice for Rudolph's Butch-and-Sundance hideaway: rivers flush with bass and trout, lots of Dumpsters when the fish weren't biting, some sympathetic locals, and enough new residents so he wouldn't stick out as long as he stayed neat and nonchalant. His friendliness may have helped. Reports suggest that people spotted him - but "wanted" posters apparently didn't spring to mind.
Rudolph also might have known how politics ran in this mountain town. Some here may have shared his sentiments - at least enough to turn the other way. Even after his capture, the story is greeted as half scandal, half legend. At the Daily Grind coffee shop, women served up "Captured Cappuccinos" this weekend, and a sign outside town read: "Pray for Eric Rudolph." After his arrest, Rudolph signed autographs of his "wanted" posters for sheriff's deputies.
"I'd like to say he was or he wasn't [helped]," says Officer Jeff Postell, the 21-year-old former Wal-Mart security guard who caught Rudolph behind the Save-A-Lot market early Saturday. "But I don't know."
The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Rudolph had skills, strong beliefs, and perhaps a small cadre of friends. At his camp he left behind a cache of pilfered bananas, onions, and tomatoes, and a pile of firewood. Small footpaths led into the mountains and to his secondary camp - what survivalists call the "castle keep," a refuge should the full-scale search resume.
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But while he might have gleaned survival skills from fellow Christian Identity adherents in the mountains, some here insist he shared little with original settlers and the Indian tribes that found bounty in these temperate crags and valleys.
"Everybody's making him out to be some kind of Daniel Boone, but all he did was grow some dope up in the mountains," says a bearded hunter whittling cedar backscratchers on the stoop of Mason's Bait & Tackle. "People blame the FBI, which they say couldn't track a gut-shot buffalo through six feet of snow."
Law-enforcement experts say the FBI deserves credit for flooding the media with pictures and publicizing Rudolph's alleged misdeeds. Still, the FBI itself may have been a reason why some here who nurse an old suspicion of the federal government looked the other way - even with a $1 million reward. "People here don't believe in killing, but there's lots of people who believe he may not have done it," says Harold Helton, owner of H&H Sports in Murphy.
Those who study how extremist movements integrate themselves into communities say Cherokee County, along with northern Idaho, is one of a few places in the country where a fugitive can find sympathy in eluding the long arm of Washington.
In fact, a few months before Rudolph was captured, police found militia leader Steve Anderson, former host of shortwave radio show "The Militia Hour," holed up in Cherokee County - three years after he allegedly shot at a Kentucky sheriff's deputy.
"He and Eric Rudolph were, in essence, neighbors," says Mark Pitcavage, national director of Fact Finding for the Anti-Defamation League. "It's an example of committed extremists being able to stay in western North Carolina for quite a long time, clearly with the help of somebody."
But the allure of living on the outskirts of society - albeit a society he rejected - may have worn thin. Many suggest that, after five years in the woods, Rudolph got lonely and basically gave himself up. True survivalism - total severance from society - might, at any rate, have eluded a man dogged by his past. "Being a fugitive would certainly cramp your style," says Reeve.
Described by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as "the most notorious American fugitive on the FBI's 'Most Wanted' list," Rudolph fled his trailer in Murphy, North Carolina, in January 1998, after learning that the FBI was looking for him, authorities said. He had rented a video, "Kull the Conqueror," and eaten at a Burger King that day, but vanished before agents arrived. A full-scale manhunt ensued.
Rudolph, known to be able to survive in the wilderness for long periods of time, was apparently last seen July 7, 1998, six months after his disappearance, trying to buy food and other supplies from a friend who owned a health food store in Andrews, North Carolina. He reportedly took about 75 pounds of food and a pickup truck, leaving $500 in cash behind. The truck was later found near the forest with a note asking that it be returned to its owner.
Investigators had calculated how many calories he would require each day to survive. As time passed, some believed he might have died. Sources told CNN they believed he was foraging, fishing and probably stealing food.
When captured in Murphy on Saturday, Rudolph was in relatively good health, though he had lost weight, Cherokee County Sheriff Keith Lovin said. (Full story)
Authorities say he was familiar with the many thicketed caves and abandoned mines in the area and theorized that he might have been hiding there.
"He and his friends used to play basically an adult version of hide and seek, where they would run and hide in the woods and people would try to find them," Stone said.
Harris said Rudolph had spent time in the woods hiking and camping since childhood and knew caves all around the area, and had cached supplies in some of them.
Rudolph spent his teenage and young-adult years in North Carolina after moving from Florida with his mother and siblings after the death of his father in 1981.
