Osama bin Laden: The Biggest Fish of Them All

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Wherever he is, Mohammed is a tremendous catch. The documents, files and cell phones taken from the house in Rawalpindi were flown to the U.S. and are being pored over at the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center in Virginia. The items seized have already yielded the names of at least a dozen men in the U.S who were known to be al-Qaeda associates and were under surveillance; other names are new to the authorities and are being checked out. So far, FBI officials say, there have been no electrifying breakthroughs, identifying previously unknown cells. "There aren't any eye-openers," says an FBI official. But there's still a lot of material to absorb. Law-enforcement authorities are especially concerned that al-Qaeda may be planning attacks on national monuments in the U.S. and trying to disrupt the economy. New York authorities and the FBI have been paying particular attention to securing the bridges into New York City's Manhattan island, especially the Brooklyn Bridge, which is an icon and a vital economic artery. At the same time, officials are anxious to see if al-Hawsawi's files reveal detailed records of al-Qaeda's finances.

It's Mohammed who may hold the greatest intelligence treasures. He may be the only man able to fill in the holes in the authorities' knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot. (Why did the hijackers spend so much time in Las Vegas? What role, if any, was intended for Zacarias Moussaoui, arrested in Minnesota in August 2001?) But Mohammed's significance in international terrorism goes far beyond Sept. 11. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official says Mohammed's name came up so often in the communication intercepts that triggered last month's orange alert that he seemed capable of simultaneously orchestrating several different plots in the U.S. and elsewhere. "If I had to choose who was a bigger catch, Osama or Khalid Shaikh," says a senior Pakistani intelligence official, "I'd say Khalid Shaikh."

Rohan Gunaratna, author of an admired study of al-Qaeda, goes further. Mohammed's arrest, he thinks, has "cut al-Qaeda's operational ability by 50% at least in the next one to two years." Gunaratna's judgment is based on Mohammed's experience and his ruthlessness. Mohammed has been involved in international terrorism at least since 1995, when he and his nephew Ramzi Yousef--who organized the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center--planned to blow up a dozen airliners over the Pacific. Mohammed, says Gunaratna, "always thought big. His capacity to conceptualize, plan and implement low-cost, high-impact operations has been constantly underestimated by the international security and intelligence community. A large 9/11 operation is simply not possible now without him."