The Phony War

2. WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT AL QAEDA CAN STILL HURT US
If the president had kept his focus on capturing bin Laden, top officials say, he might have been able to declare a swift victory. Instead, Bush shifted from going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to going after Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- a decision with fateful consequences for U.S. security. "Iraq broke our back in the War on Terror," says Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's Al Qaeda unit until 2004.

Bin Laden, thought to be hiding in Pakistan, may not retain much ability to coordinate terrorist acts, but by his very existence he provides a rallying point for other would-be terrorists. "He is not much more than a standard-bearer," says White. "He's like a regimental flag-carrier, holding up the flag and trying to inspire people." About forty times over the past five years, bin Laden and Zawahiri have delivered tapes for broadcast, usually to the Arabic-language television channel Al Jazeera. There is no indication that any of these messages relate directly to specific acts of terrorism, but their taunting bravado encourages wanna-be terrorists.

"They're inspired by the great fucking leader," says a former CIA station chief with wide experience in the Middle East. "And we need the great fucking leader's head on a pike."

Unfortunately, now that bin Laden and Zawahiri are in Pakistan, finding them is an exceedingly difficult assignment. "In the sense that Al Qaeda is decentralized, it's much harder to get your hands around," says John McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director who left the agency in 2004. Whatever is left of Al Qaeda's core leadership has gone off the grid, avoiding electronic communications, and the CIA suspects that they connect with one another only through couriers. "They're highly conscious of operational security, and they've got geography in their favor," says Paul Pillar, a retired CIA counterterrorism expert who served as chief Middle East analyst under Bush. "The area that they're thought to be in is pretty much alien territory."

As a result, the CIA knows almost nothing about how bin Laden contacts the copycat groups he inspires. "We don't know squat about their leadership, or how they communicate," says a longtime CIA official who recently retired. "We don't know where they are, so we don't know who they are. We don't even know how the fucking videotapes get to Al Jazeera."