December 24, 2001	Monday	Shawwal 8, 1422

WASHINGTON, Dec 22: For four years prior to the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the US Central Intelligence Agency paid a team of some 15 Afghan agents to regularly track Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

About once a month, the team was able to pinpoint Osama’s presence in a specific building, compound or training camp, and that location was then confirmed by the CIA through communications intelligence or satellite overhead photography, the daily reported.

The United States never used the information to launch an attack on Osama, who remains at large despite the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that hosted him.

One source told the newspaper that the team had information about Osama’s location a majority of the time: “Bottom line: We had eyes on him most of the time.”

Sometimes, however, the team would lose track of him.

“There would be a week or two when he (Osama) would be out of pocket,” a source with firsthand knowledge of the operation told The Post.

The tracking team was part of a covert CIA operation to capture or kill Osama launched first by the Clinton administration and continued under President George W. Bush.

The daily reported that Bush had been considering an even more ambitious plan to destroy Osama and his Al-Qaeda network in the summer before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.—AFP