Bin Laden in good health, says official
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the terror group's tactical mastermind, claimed he met bin Laden just weeks ago after arranging a rendezvous through a complicated network of phone calls, runners and intermediaries.
The meeting took place somewhere in southwestern Pakistan's Baluchistan province or amid the rugged peaks that run like a seam along the Afghan border.
The official said he was one of a team of Pakistani and CIA agents who interrogated Mohammed for hours after he was captured in a stunning pre-dawn raid in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Saturday.
"He said proudly, 'the sheik is a hero of Islam and I am his tiny servant. Life, family, money, everything can be sacrificed for the sheik,'" said the intelligence official, who did not reveal what Mohammed and bin Laden discussed.
Mohammed told his interrogators he didn't know bin Laden's exact whereabouts, but that he was in the remote region.
In what would appear to corroborate Mohammed's information, AP received similar information on Monday from a former intelligence chief of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.
In Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, he said bin Laden had been seen in South Waziristan in Pakistan's Baluchistan province less than two months ago.
Bin Laden was meeting with Taliban members, he said.
His report could not be independently verified, but both US Special Forces and Pakistani soldiers are in South Waziristan trying to flush out Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives.
Colonel Roger King, a US military spokesman in Afghanistan, also said they believe bin Laden is in "this general region Afghanistan and the countries that surround it".
Several sources say bin Laden moves with only a small number of guards. He changes his location nightly and never uses satellite telephones that could be used to pinpoint his location.
Instead, he reportedly sends messages through intermediaries to a selected person who makes phone calls on his behalf, according to another former Taliban member.
Mohammed's arrest has confirmed the identities of about a dozen suspected terrorists living in the US, a government official said yesterday.
Discussing the intelligence haul from the search of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's living quarters, the US official said authorities were already aware of the individuals whose names were part of the intelligence haul.
Federal law enforcement officials have said that a vast amount of information was found when Mohammed was arrested, including computers, computer disks, portable telephones and documents.
The official said authorities are keeping the al-Qaida suspects under surveillance and that no arrests are imminent. Continued tracking of the suspects might lead authorities to other al-Qaida figures.
The FBI warned that while the arrest was a major blow to al-Qaida, it could speed up planned attacks by the terrorist network in the United States.
Mohammed's capture "deals a severe long-term blow" to al-Qaida's ability to carry out attacks, said a weekly FBI memo sent to 18,000 US state and local law enforcement agencies.
