Inside The Hunt For Osama

The exercise was code-named Poised Response. Attorney General Janet Reno had invited 200 policemen from the Washington metropolitan area to the FBI's headquarters last Oct. 14 to plan how they'd react to a terrorist attack in the nation's capital. They settled in that Wednesday morning to consider four scenarios: a car-bomb attack, a chemical-weapons strike on a Washington Redskins football game, the planting of an explosive device in a federal building and an assassination attempt on Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State. But the war game--intended to help the agencies practice working together--quickly melted down into interagency squabbling and finger pointing....