Osama bin Laden: The Biggest Fish of Them All

The trail went cold sometime in December 2001, when Osama bin Laden slipped away from the caves and forests of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan into the wild White Mountains that stretch along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The precise date on which he left Tora Bora isn't known. Pakistani intelligence claims that he was gone as early as Dec. 8, when a bungled operation by American special-operations troops and their local allies to flush al-Qaeda leaders out of the mountains had only just begun. But one former Taliban fighter says bin Laden slipped away when the besieging forces were tricked into granting a cease-fire on Dec. 16. Whatever the truth, for 15 months his existence has been revealed to the outside world only by means of occasional audiotapes exhorting the faithful to continue the battle. Like Pancho Villa hiding from the forces of General John Pershing, or Che Guevara flitting through the jungles of South America, bin Laden is a man whose legend endures despite his invisibility.

George W. Bush must hate that legend. The President doesn't talk much these days about the man he once wanted captured "dead or alive." In fact, Bush hasn't mentioned bin Laden in a speech since February 2002 and has not spoken his name in public at all since last July. But snaring the al-Qaeda leader would be a huge coup for Bush, damaging the network of international Islamic extremists and proving that U.S. preparations for a possible war in Iraq have not compromised the fight against terrorism. With the capture on March 1 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chairman of al-Qaeda's operations committee who is thought to have masterminded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hopes ran high that bin Laden--the most wanted man in the world--would be the next terrorist kingpin taken.

Dampening expectations, a senior Administration official counsels caution; the U.S., he says, is no closer to finding bin Laden after Mohammed's capture than it was before. But although sources give different shadings to the consequences of Mohammed's arrest and interrogation, it is plain that the raid in Rawalpindi has produced some leads. Pakistani and U.S. officials confirm to TIME that the trove of papers, computer records and other information taken with Mohammed included communications with bin Laden, possibly a pair of handwritten letters. Both Pakistani and U.S. sources tell TIME they are certain bin Laden is in Pakistan or just across the Afghan border. Some officials from both countries suggest he may be in the tribal areas in the north of Pakistan, in whose wild hills and deep ravines the writ of the central government has never run. But other leads seem to point elsewhere. U.S. warplanes last week dropped leaflets with pictures of bin Laden, offering a $25 million reward for his capture, on the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, much farther south, and four U.S. intelligence agents carrying satellite phones and bags full of gear arrived at the nearby Pakistani town of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province. At the same time, persistent reports, denied by Administration officials, came in of a gunfight involving two of bin Laden's sons close to Ribat, a smuggler's crossing in the far west of Baluchistan where the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran meet.