Locating bin Laden.

• Author: Scherer, John L.
• Position: National Security - Osama bin Laden

SO WHERE, FINALLY, is Osama bin Laden? Many in Washington still believe he is hiding in South Waziristan, or Noah Waziristan, or perhaps Bajaur, all outlying agencies in northwest Pakistan. After his having eluded intelligence agents and military forces searching the region for more than nine years, it seems worthwhile to look elsewhere.

There are plenty of places. Shortly after 9/11, informants claimed bin Laden had been seen in West Darfur and in Juba, in southern Sudan. He and his family had lived in Sudan from 1991-96. More recently, in 2009, UCLA researchers Thomas W. Gillespie and John A. Agnew employed satellite geographical analysis to identify three compounds in Parachinar, Pakistan, which could serve as hideouts. In March 2009, the New York Daily News claimed that the search had focused on the Chitral district of Pakistan, particularly the Kalam Valley. A captured Al Qaeda chieftain confirmed that bin Laden was hiding in Chitral. In December 2009, a Taliban detainee in Pakistan insisted bin Laden had been living in Afghanistan. The detainee claimed that, during the preceding January or February, he met someone who had seen bin Laden about 15 to 20 days earlier inside the war-tom country.

In the 2010 film "Feathered Cocaine," falconer Alan Parrot asserted that bin Laden has lived in Iran for at least seven years. Parrot interviewed another falconer there who claimed to have met bin Laden six times since March 2003 on hunting expeditions. The man insisted that bin Laden routinely engaged in falconry, and felt so secure that he traveled with only four bodyguards. In May 2010, Human Events provided supporting evidence: Iran had accepted 35 Al Qaeda leaders after the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, despite the conflict between the Sunnis of Al Qaeda and the Shiite regime in Iran. In June 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that bin Laden was in Iran preparing new terror attacks. In 2004, Richard Miniter had written in Shadow War that two former Iranian intelligence agents told him they had seen bin Laden in Iron the previous year. Some analysts believe that bin Laden switched from video to audiocassettes because he could not find anywhere in Iran that resembled Afghanistan or northern Pakistan. In February 2009, the U.S. Treasury placed sanctions on high-ranking Al Qaeda operatives working out of Iran.

The London Sunday Times reported on Dec. 23, 2009, that at least 19 of bin Laden's family had crossed from Afghanistan into Iran, most shortly before Sept. 11, 2001. They have lived under virtual house arrest outside Tehran, largely because the Iranian government did not know what to do with them. Some analysts had speculated that bin Laden's second son, Muhammad, had served as the second-in-command of Al Qaeda, and that another son, Saad, had instigated terrorist attacks until being killed by a drone in 2008. Relatives insisted, to the contrary, Muhammad still is living in the compound, and Sand ran away in 2009 to find his mother, who resides in Syria with three other bin Laden children. At one point, Saad reportedly lived at Kermanshah, Iran, near the border with Iraq. One of the daughters, Iman, escaped from Iran, and sought asylum in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden does not enjoy good relations with family members, so he may be nowhere near them.

All of this sounds credible, but no one in the West has identified him in these places or, for that matter, anywhere else. On Dec. 6, 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted that the U.S. had received no accurate information about his whereabouts in years. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani has rejected claims that bin Laden resides on his territory.

The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that an Israeli woman insisted she had seen bin Laden at the Denpasar Airport in Bail on Aug. 22, 2002. He had a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist and was accompanied by two bodyguards. The man she saw had a short beard and wore Western clothes. Of course, the woman probably did not correctly identify bin Laden. A number of people surely believe they have spotted him at various locations during the past several years, but Israelis, who have struggled against terrorism for decades, are more likely to recognize him than other nationalities.

Al Qaeda has made every effort to throw trackers off the trail. It has increased communications traffic (e-mails, coded messages, phone calls) periodically to suggest an impending attack, when none has occurred. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed confessed to attacks planned in the U.S. against school buses, oil rigs, and hospitals, when none happened. Ramsi bin-al-Shibh confessed to plots targeting the financial districts of Boston and New York, but these proved false alarms. The December 2009 airline bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmatullab, claimed his failed attempt to be the "first of many," but it probably was not.

Terrorist attacks need not succeed to frighten the public. Abdulmatullab only had to mix the chemicals correctly and place the bomb exactly where it could destroy enough of the plane to bring it down, but he managed neither. Faisal Shahzad's car bomb in Times Square in May 2010 included fertilizer, but it had...