Missing Link

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It would be a small catastrophe. For all their brusqueness, the Yemeni tactics did lead to the arrest of suspects with potential links to bin Laden. One was Jamal al-Badawi, who Yemeni officials believe is the bombing operation's second in command. Al-Badawi allegedly told interrogators that some months before the attack, he spent time in a training camp in Afghanistan run by a well-known bin Laden associate. They also nabbed two document clerks in the government registry office in the town of Lahej who allegedly provided false documents for the conspiracy. Also in custody is a man who was allegedly assigned to videotape the bombing.

Al-Badawi's reported confessions were apparently not the result of torture, say surprised State Department officials. His testimony revealed that the brains of the operation was still at large. U.S. and Yemeni officials say the ringleader was Mohammed Omar al-Harazi, an experienced terrorist of many disguises and aliases. U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe al-Harazi is an explosives expert for al Qaeda and has inspired or directed several terrorist attacks on American targets over nearly a decade.

That seems to be enough for the Yemenis. "Osama bin Laden prepared, financed and perpetrated the Cole attack," says Abd al-Karim al-Iryani, Yemen's Prime Minister at the time of the attack and now a senior adviser to Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih. But that is not quite enough for the Americans. The FBI and other U.S. officials say they still don't have the evidence to prove their case in a U.S. court, and that all goes back to not being able to conduct an American-style investigation. And even though the Yemenis have suspects, an FBI official says, "they don't have everybody. There are people in the wind."

In the beginning, the U.S.-Yemeni cultural chasm seemed comic. "Sometimes the Yemenis were completely baffled by our requests," says a U.S. official. Such as the one for mud. Last autumn the FBI said it would pay the Yemenis $1 million for a bargeful of mud from beneath the explosion site. After some resistance and suspicion, the Yemenis smiled, pocketed the $1 million and let the dredging begin. The FBI shipped the mud off to Dubai, and agents sifted through it for forensic evidence--pieces of the boat and the two bombers that could provide important clues. Now there are no longer any American agents left in Aden. And the U.S. search for Osama bin Laden is still stuck in the mud.