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.
Earlier today, Pakastani officials reported that two of bin Laden's sons were wounded and possibly arrested in a joint U.S.-Afghan raid in Afghan-Pakistani border region that killed seven suspected al Qaeda members. U.S. officials discounted the report but did not say it was entirely untrue. They confirmed that the raid did take place and told ABCNEWS that several of bin Laden's sons are being closely tracked.
Either way, U.S. officials say they want to get bin Laden on the run, because as long as he remains holed up in one location he is more difficult to find than when he is traveling.
Information From Terror Lieutenant
The hunt for the Saudi-born terrorist mastermind has reached a fever pitch, with the launch of major military operations in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, with teams of CIA agents directly involved in the hunt for America's most-wanted terrorist.
That search centered on two areas in Baluchistan. One near the northern city of Chaman, near the Afghan border, where planes dropped leaflets on Thursday reminding people of the $25 million reward for bin Laden.
The sudden optimism that the world's most-wanted terrorist may soon be captured, officials say, was sparked by information obtained following the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a top-ranking al Qaeda leader, in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi over the weekend.
Mohammed is believed to be the third-ranking al Qaeda leader and the chief operations planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials say a number of documents were seized from the Rawalpindi house where he was arrested along with Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged financier of the attacks on America.
There have been widespread reports that the interrogation of Mohammed, who is believed to be at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, would lead to the capture of the al Qaeda leader.
Unconfirmed Sightings
There have been numerous unconfirmed reports of bin Laden sightings in the area on both sides of the Pakistani-Iranian border.
"They definitely have him pinned down to a small area. This will be a major operation," Cannistraro said.
Mohammed also reportedly told his interrogators that he had met bin Laden within the last month.
Authorities believe information from Mohammed's cell phones dovetails with other information they already had, which leads them to believe they have a very good lead on bin Laden's whereabouts.
Earlier this week, Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said several weapons, computer discs and papers were seized during Mohammed's arrest. But he cast doubts on reports that Mohammed had met bin Laden in recent weeks.
Ahmed did not, however, deny that Mohammed and bin Laden had been in contact with each other in recent weeks.
"Nowadays to have a meeting, you do not need to be present personally," he said. "This meeting can take place via computer, and there are many ways of meeting."
There were also reports in the Pakistani press that some of the documents seized during Mohammed's arrest were letters written in Arabic, including handwritten notes by bin Laden.
Whether or not bin Laden actually can be brought in and tried remains an open question. U.S. officials who have interrogated al Qaeda prisoners say bin Laden would not want to be taken alive.
"I always had this dream of seeing him in an orange prisoners' jump suit that said 'Metropolitan Correctional Center' [in New York City], but I think he will want to shoot it out because he has scripted his own demise," said Jack Cloonan, an FBI bin Laden investigator until he retired recently. "He wants to be a martyr."
ABCNEWS' chief investigative reporter Brian Ross and Mike Lee contributed to this report.