Word: arresting
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Dampening expectations, a senior Administration official counsels caution; the U.S., he says, is no closer to finding bin Laden after Mohammed's capture than it was before. But although sources give different shadings to the consequences of Mohammed's arrest and interrogation, it is plain that the raid in Rawalpindi has produced some leads. Pakistani and U.S. officials confirm to TIME that the trove of papers, computer records and other information taken with Mohammed included communications with bin Laden, possibly a pair of handwritten letters. Both Pakistani and U.S. sources tell TIME they are certain bin Laden is in Pakistan...
...leaping from roof to roof. A third man was detained; he turned out to be Mohammed Abdel Rahman, the son of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric currently in a U.S. federal prison for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1995. After the son's arrest, the two missing men were traced to the house in Rawalpindi where Mohammed was eventually arrested. "We weren't sure we had the right man," said a Pakistani officer involved in the raid. "He wasn't at all like his photos; he seemed fat and droopy." But when Mohammed...
Rohan Gunaratna, author of an admired study of al-Qaeda, goes further. Mohammed's arrest, he thinks, has "cut al-Qaeda's operational ability by 50% at least in the next one to two years." Gunaratna's judgment is based on Mohammed's experience and his ruthlessness. Mohammed has been involved in international terrorism at least since 1995, when he and his nephew Ramzi Yousef--who organized the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center--planned to blow up a dozen airliners over the Pacific. Mohammed, says Gunaratna, "always thought big. His capacity to conceptualize, plan and implement low-cost...
That's a big claim. Official U.S. judgments don't go quite so far. But last week's classified FBI Intelligence Bulletin did say the arrest of Mohammed "deals a severe blow to al-Qaeda's ability to plan and carry out attacks against the United States." That includes "spectacular" operations. The bulletin says Mohammed met last year with Jose Padilla, an American convert to Islam who was arrested in Chicago last summer on his return from meetings with al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. Mohammed, says the bulletin, discussed with Padilla "a plot involving the detonation of a radiological device...
...matter how operational bin Laden's organization might still be, it would struggle to recruit more members or provoke more rebellion. With the charismatic leader in shackles, the entire organization would suffer paralysis. His arrest might result in more hatred of the U.S. But without a leader as charismatic and appealing as bin Laden, his followers would not be able to utilize that anger...