Can Bin Laden Be Caught?

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It might be, but no one is confusing misdirection for surrender. While improved cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan has apparently helped the U.S. zero in on bin Laden's lieutenants, credible intelligence on the main target's whereabouts is sketchy at best. Law-enforcement officials say that bin Laden's message aside, there are no signs of heightened al-Qaeda activity in the U.S., but they don't discount the possibility of a terrorist attack. "The threat's still real," says a U.S. intelligence official, "but because of this tape, does that make it any more real than it was before the tape? No." Today, the official says, al-Qaeda is not the same outfit it was on 9/11; it has morphed from a command-and-control organization into a philosophy that has "inspired cells around the world ... It's harder for them to coordinate, but it also makes them very dangerous."

Some terrorism experts believe that the perception that bin Laden is vulnerable may make jihadists more determined to carry out attacks. "I'd be worried over the next 60 to 90 days," says a former FBI counterterrorism official. "I believe if we don't hear from al-Qaeda in the near term, some will paint bin Laden as weakened and unable to deliver on his threat"--a possibility that may motivate terrorists to try to strike soon, to make good on the promises of their leader.

The reappearance of bin Laden came at a moment when U.S. intelligence officials felt pretty good about themselves. Even as the cassette tape was making its way out of bin Laden's secret lair, his pursuers were sending out signals across the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he may be hiding. In recent weeks U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies have stepped up their search for top al-Qaeda leaders, with the skies above the mountains buzzing with spy planes and unmanned Predator drones, and a network of local spies and informants has been scouring the landscape for information. A Pakistani security officer told TIME the CIA has installed sophisticated surveillance equipment in several offices of the ISI, Pakistan's spy agency, to monitor any radio and Internet communications between al-Qaeda and its sympathizers.

The objective is to tighten the net around bin Laden and his deputies. In December a U.S. guided-missile attack in North Waziristan, based on intelligence from agents on the ground, reportedly killed Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian believed to have been the latest occupant of al-Qaeda's No. 3 spot. Then, in early January, the U.S. and Pakistan seized on the chance to bag even bigger prey. Details of the Damadola operation are beginning to emerge, and they provide a tantalizing glimpse into the intensifying hunt for bin Laden. A Peshawar-based official told TIME that in the past month, Pakistani-intelligence field agents had been tracking two groups of men who had crossed the border from Afghanistan into Bajaur, a small, often restive tribal region that borders Afghanistan's Kunar province. In the days before the attack, the search zoomed in on the group headed for Damadola; counterterrorist officials believed that some top al-Qaeda figures, including possibly al-Zawahiri himself, might have been in that group. "We knew there were going to be some VIPs, and any of those were worthy" targets, says a U.S. official.