Officials Narrow Bin Laden Search to Caravan

March 7, 2003 — -- U.S. and Pakistani officials have narrowed their search for Osama bin Laden to a caravan near the border of southwestern Pakistan, ABCNEWS has learned.

The CIA and Pakistani army are electronically tracking the large caravan of people on foot and horseback through the rugged mountain area of Pakistan between the borders with Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistani officials told ABCNEWS.

Bin Laden may be traveling with the caravan and may be on foot.

Officials have cast a net around the caravan — using electronic U.S. surveillance and planes with cameras that can see through darkness to monitor its movement along a trail.

U.S. officials say they are not 100 percent sure that bin Laden is in the caravan, but they have a high degree of probability that he is and have closed off the area to all other traffic.

The area is so rugged that officials may not be able to move in with military vehicles, but instead could launch an operation with CIA paramilitary forces attacking the caravan from helicopters if it is determined that bin Laden is there.

President Bush has also authorized the launch of a missile attack if bin Laden is positively identified.

Bin Laden's son Saad was recently in the Iranian capital, Tehran, European anti-terrorism officials told ABCNEWS, and it was a cell-phone call to him that turned authorities onto bin Laden's trail.

"His son, apparently Saad, is in Iran and some of his wives also are in Iran and he has made apparently a big mistake," said ABCNEWS terrorism consultant Vince Cannistraro.

Though bin Laden's voice patterns were identified in the intercepted cell phone conversation, U.S. officials are aware that the call could have been a decoy to try to get bin Laden's pursuers off the trail.

When it was believed that bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora in Afghanistan, the al Qaeda kingpin gave a cell phone and a tape recording of his voice to a group that headed out of the region in one direction, while the terror chief sneaked out in another.