NYPost

CLOSING IN ON OSAMA

By NILES LATHEM

November 3, 2001 -- WASHINGTON - U.S. forces in Afghanistan have narrowed the hunt for Osama bin Laden to a handful of cave complexes near Pakistan, where he transformed ancient irrigation tunnels into underground fortresses during the Soviet war in the 1980s.

U.S. military and intelligence officials told The Post last night that five suspected al Qaeda cave complexes located in the Paktia province, near the Pakistani border, are now under 24-hour surveillance by U.S. spy satellites, U-2 spy planes and Predator drone aircraft while U.S. military planners debate how and when to attack them.

A second set of caves, in the Oruzgan province north of Kandahar, is also being closely studied by the Pentagon as possible hideouts for Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar and the 30 top members of his governing council.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem insisted yesterday that bin Laden remains an "elusive character" and that operations aimed at killing or capturing him are not "imminent."

But Stufflebeem conceded progress is being made and that "it's a matter of time" before the full force of U.S. military might is brought to bear on bin Laden.

Military sources said that intelligence agencies began to focus on the Paktia cave complexes in the early phases of Operation Enduring Freedom after receiving reports from Russia and Pakistan that bin Laden reinforced underground tunnel complexes and used them to conduct operations against the Soviet army in the 1980s.

That is where he recruited Muslim extremists from around the world to fight against the Soviet occupation - registering each volunteer on a master list he called al Qaeda or "the base."

Suspicions that bin Laden and his henchmen moved back to the region after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon grew after the release of bin Laden's videotaped anti-Western diatribe on Oct. 7.

Government geologists identified the limestone rocks behind bin Laden and reported they showed distinctive formations unique to the smaller mountains in the Paktia region, sources said.

U.S. military chiefs have still not decided whether to bomb the cave complexes or stage commando raids.

Intelligence agencies are using high-tech devices including thermal and seismic imagery to detect heat, movement and sound inside suspected mountain hideouts, sources said.

Intelligence sources say bin Laden was last spotted by a CIA-controlled Predator drone at a terror camp near Kandahar a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The drone was unarmed and the U.S. at the time did not have the military forces in place to attack him. When the drone returned to the location hours later, bin Laden had already vanished.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2001