Monday, February 11, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
U.S. intelligence agencies are beginning to suspect that Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden is dead after all, despite a recent audio tape exhorting Al Qaida terrorists in Iraq.
Undated footage from the Internet shows Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden making statements from an unknown location. Reuters
Al Qaida operates a very sophisticated propaganda operations that includes the use of audio and videotape messages to rally followers and to recruit new jihadists. The new analysis of Bin Laden follows the death of No. 3 Al Qaida leader Abu Laith Al Libi, who was killed last week in a CIA-led operation in Pakistan that involved an armed unmanned aerial vehicle attack.
Asked about U.S. military or intelligence involving in the terrorist killing, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters: “I’m not going to talk any more about the operational side of this, of how that in fact occurred.”
Mullen called al Libi a key figure in Al Qaida and said “elimination of someone like that is a very important outcome in terms of this long war.”
Mullen also said safe havens for Al Qaida in Pakistan remain a concern and to be able to conduct an operation in the area was “important.”