Still alive? Osama bin Laden
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Still alive? Osama bin Laden

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The last time the world heard from Osama bin Laden, there was reason to believe his end was near. In a videotape released in December, bin Laden looked sallow; his speech was slow, and his left arm immobile. (The Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi reported last month that bin Laden was nursing a shrapnel wound when he made the tape.) The U.S intercepted chatter in the Tora Bora mountains between bin Laden and his forces that seemed to give up his location. Pakistani forces bottled up the border while American warplanes pounded the caves of eastern Afghanistan and special-ops troops positioned themselves for the big grab. "He doesn't have a lot of good options," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
But he still had a few. Six months after hailing bin Laden's imminent capture or death, Pentagon officials now admit that the al-Qaeda leader "has gone missing" since the siege of Tora Bora. Missing, of course, could mean dead, and a small minority of officials in the Pentagon, CIA and FBI believe that bin Laden's public silence since the December tape suggests he has succumbed — if not to U.S. air strikes, then possibly to kidney failure. But the fact is, Washington just doesn't know. "The proof that he's alive is, we don't hear anything from Osama bin Laden," says Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism official. "The proof that he's dead is, we don't hear anything from Osama bin Laden."

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