The Manhunt Goes Global

Back when the U.S. fought wars abroad and crime at home--back when there was a difference between the two--it didn't matter if the CIA and the FBI hated each other. Or if the Pentagon had little interest in what New York City police were doing. Or if U.S. cops had no idea what their colleagues in France or Germany were up to. But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, all of them are working together as never before. Lawyers may debate whether to label the culprits from that day as conspirators in a crime or as soldiers in a war, but the investigators know they were both. So thousands of law-enforcement, intelligence and military investigators from two dozen Western nations have banded together with a common mission: to find out who pulled off the attacks and stop their compatriots from mounting any more.

There are two fronts in the investigative battle. A "clean" army of investigators pursues leads according to rules of evidence admissible in court. Prosecutors in the U.S. and other nations will use this evidence to build cases against alleged terrorists captured since Sept. 11. President Bush said last week that nearly 150 suspected terrorists and supporters had been arrested in 25 countries. As of Sept. 30, the U.S. Department of Justice had made 383 searches under warrants and issued 4,407 subpoenas. Court cases arising from these Herculean efforts will drag on for years.

The "dirty" teams work faster, less concerned with legal finery and more intent on making a quick, persuasive case to the world that the attacks are the handiwork of Osama bin Laden. On this track, the CIA and other nations' intelligence agents use informants who aren't necessarily thuggish or unreliable but who could never appear in court; to do so would risk revealing their sources. That's why, as one CIA veteran puts it, "we only do dirty."

No matter. The source of the information doesn't matter to most people, who simply want to know if bin Laden did it. No significant military action can begin until American allies--particularly in the Middle East--can assure their citizens that bin Laden is the man responsible for Sept. 11.

Toward that end, the U.S. got a big boost last week from one of its staunchest allies. While the U.S. had presented its case against bin Laden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization privately--asserting that secrecy is needed to protect sources--British Prime Minister Tony Blair last Thursday laid out much of that evidence for the world to see in a speech that was accompanied by a 4,500-word precis. (Though the U.S. didn't orchestrate the release of the information, which included some intelligence collected not by the CIA but by British spies, it was vetted by U.S. intelligence and approved in advance by the White House.) The British white paper alleges:

--One of bin Laden's "close associates"--the British won't say who--helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks.

--In the weeks before the attacks, "close associates of bin Laden were warned to return to Afghanistan" by Sept. 10.

--Bin Laden himself "asserted shortly before 11 September that he was preparing a major attack on America."