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Source: http://www.msnbc.com/news/959544.asp?0cv=KB10
Rumors of Bin Laden's Lair
(Newsweek) Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau - Two years after the September 11 attacks, the world's Most Wanted terrorist remains free. Senior Taliban officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan say bin Laden remains directly engaged as a strategist and financier for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and related groups. In April, shortly after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Qaeda leader convened a terror summit at a mountain stronghold in Afghanistan with participants from the Taliban, several senior Qaeda operatives, and leaders from radical Islamic groups in Chechnya and Uzbekistan. Bin Laden appointed one of his most trusted lieutenants, Egyptian-born Saif al-Adel, to be al-Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq. At the same meeting bin Laden said he was working on "serious projects." "His priority is to use biological weapons," says a ranking Taliban source, who claims that al-Qaeda already has such weapons. The question is only how to transport and launch them, he asserts.