Judith Miller is the NY Times’ expert on the middle east and bin laden in particular. In case you didn’t see her Sunday article, you might find this closing passage interesting:
Counterterrorism officials have worried about the challenges of the new battlefield for years. “It’s not like the old Mafia-type cases,” said one senior F.B.I. official in a speech in 1997, “where you pigeonhole somebody and you say he’s a member of this group.
“You tend to figure out who they may be associated with, and all of a sudden they’re talking to all of the different groups at a conference where they are all bound again by the jihad, by their religious beliefs and extremism.
“And almost all of the groups today, if they chose to, have the ability to strike us here in the United States. They’re working toward that infrastructure.”
The official who made those comments, John P. O’Neill, who oversaw the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. bin Laden, retired last month to become director of security for the World Trade Center. After the first plane rammed the trade center last week, he called a close friend to say that he was on the street and was all right.
He has not been heard from since.