7/17/2007: Intel News Brief: The Bin Laden Mystery; Alive or Dead?

The mystery surrounding the question of whether Bin Laden may have
been killed, or possibly died of illness or injuries, persists today,
six years after the US government put a $25 million bounty on his
head. Is the most wanted - and the most hated - man in the United
States dead, as some analysts and officials speculate, and many hope?
Or has the man responsible for the worst acts of terrorism in the
United States managed to elude thousands of special forces from half-a-
dozen countries, and survive hundreds of thousands of pounds of
explosives dropped on him by the most sophisticated aircrafts and war
machines in the world?

Many believe him to have died. There has been no news of Bin Laden in
more than a year. During that time it was his Egyptian deputy Ayman Al
Zawahiri who appeared in a number of video recordings on Islamist Web
sites urging the group's followers to continue the struggle. The most
recent of such messages was made a week ago during the siege of the
Red Mosque in Islamabad by Pakistani troops, in which the deputy chief
of al Qaeda asked Pakistanis to rise up against President Pervez
Musharraf in retaliation for the storming of the militant-held mosque
in which more than 100 Islamist extremists died.

But a new video released over this past weekend on an Islamist
Internet Web site shows the chief of Al Qaeda looking very much alive,
much to the delight of his supporters and to the great consternation
of many others.

Since the United States went on the offensive, trying to hunt him
down, time and again there have been multiple reports of his death,
some accompanied by detailed explanations; he has not been seen in
years; the footage released of him shows him in the wrong season, and
so forth and so on. And once again, after months of speculation and
absence comes a new video recording showing Bin Laden alive. The last
recording from Bin Laden - an audiotape - goes back to July 1, 2006.

As with most Bin Laden tapes, establishing a date when the new tape
was made is difficult given that other than calling for more
"martyrdom operations," Bin Laden makes no mention of any specific
event allowing analysts to place a time stamp on the recording.

In the short, less than 60-second segment taken from a longer piece,
Bin Laden praises those who die in the name of jihad, or holy war.
"Even the Prophet Mohammed had been wishing to be a martyr," says Bin
Laden. "The happy [man] is the one that God has chosen him to be a
martyr."

You may call it a coincidence, but at about the same time as the
release of this new message from Bin Laden the US Senate has just
voted - 87-1 - to double the reward for the death or capture of Al
Qaeda's chief to $50 million. Cingress may well double it again; the
chances of Bin Laden being turned in for money should certainly
motivate more than one person with knowledge of his whereabouts, but
with equal knowledge that they would most likely not live long enough
to collect the first instalment, let alone spend it.

The tape surfaces at a time when the intelligence community is warning
that Bin Laden's terrorist outfit has regrouped and found new strength
and new followers, and that the organization is now looking for ways
to infiltrate agents into the United States, all the while plotting to
strike at America.

Indeed, as United Press International reported last week, a report
from the 16 US intelligence agencies shows that the Al Qaeda terrorist
network is still a potent enemy despite an all-out war waged against
it almost everywhere in the world by the United States.

The report, called a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), stipulates
that the terrorist group has actually grown beyond the point where it
was September 11, 2001, gaining more recruits and sympathizers in a
number of countries. Still according to the NIE, Bin Laden and his
followers have been able to find refuge in Pakistan's troubled
Northwest Frontier territory.

Appearing before members of Congress last week, intelligence analysts
said that Al Qaeda had created a safe haven in Pakistan's remote
provinces. It is there, in the remote wilderness of Pakistan along the
border with Afghanistan, that many intelligence analysts believe that
Bin Laden has found refuge.

Then again, that is assuming that Bin Laden is still alive. In which
case, why does he choose not to put to rest the rumors of his
premature death? Certainly his ego must be clashing with his inner
voice - and his security advisors - calling for him to perpetuate the
mystery.
Source: Intel News Brief via Middle East Times Commentary