Is Osama bin Laden Dying ... Again? - TIME

Is Osama bin Laden Dying ... Again?

By MASSIMO CALABRESI

Which is closer to dying: Osama bin Laden or the CIA's effort to catch him? Nothing has characterized the fruitlessness of the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader so much as the recurrent — and mostly inaccurate — reports that he is seriously ailing, or even at death's door. In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI's top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, said, "I personally think he is probably not with us anymore." Since then, of course, bin Laden has appeared on multiple videos looking healthier than ever.

Now the CIA has produced a report saying that bin Laden has long-term kidney disease and may have only months to live, two U.S. officials familiar with the report told TIME. The agency ostensibly managed to get the names of some of the medications bin Laden is taking. One U.S. official familiar with the report, which came out between six and nine months ago, says it concluded, "Based on his current pharmaceutical intake, [we] would expect that he has no more than six to 18 months to live and impending kidney failure."

That prognosis, along with some on-the-ground intelligence and a well-aimed Hellfire missile, will get you a dead terrorist leader. Close watchers of the al-Qaeda terror network find such reports inherently unreliable. "It's trying to make a diagnosis from thousands of miles away with only fragments of the medical chart," says Paul Pillar, former top analyst and deputy director of the CIA's counterterrorism center, who now teaches at Georgetown University. Says Frances Fragos Townsend, who stepped down last November as chief of President George W. Bush's Homeland Security Council, "I've read all the same conflicting reports [on bin Laden's health] that people have talked to you about. I never found one set of reporting more persuasive than another."

The CIA, for its part, is disavowing the claims attributed to the report. "I have found no one here familiar with this alleged report or the analytic line it supposedly conveys," says Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman. "The fact that anonymous sources attribute views to the CIA is not, by itself, reason to believe the agency actually holds those views," he says.

If bin Laden really is dying, the news would doubtless be greeted with some ambivalence. On the one hand, his demise is what the U.S. government has been fervently trying to hasten — since before 9/11. But death by kidney disease is not exactly what it had in mind. "Wouldn't that be a tragic situation if, with all this effort, bin Laden died without it happening at the hands of coalition forces?" says one current senior counterterrorism official. Given the reliability of past long-distance diagnoses, however, and the continuing threat al-Qaeda poses around the world, that may be the least of America's worries.

死去活来的本拉登

　　究竟是拉登快归天了还是CIA对他的怨念快终结了？没什么能比那些重复且不准确的报告更能说明追捕基地组织老大的行动有多么失败了——说什么拉登病重或者病危。2002年，巴基斯坦总统穆沙拉夫说拉登有肾病，并需要依赖透析机过活。同年，FBI反恐行动负责人戴尔.华生表示：“我个人认为拉登可能已经归西了。”那之后，拉登还是多次出现在视频中，看起来倍儿精神。
　　最近，据两位政府官员向TIME透露，CIA又炮制了一份报告称拉登患有慢性肾病，只剩几个月的活头了。貌似CIA弄到了拉登用药的部分名字。这位看过那份6-9个月之前的报告的官员说，报告的结论是：“基于拉登的用药情况，我们可以预计在6—18个月内拉登会因肾衰而死。”
　　这个预言，加上当地的特工，再加上瞄的很准的"地狱火"导弹，就等于恐怖组织头目的项上人头了吗？关注基地组织的观察家认为这项报告并不可靠。“这报告就像用‘悬丝诊脉’的办法给千里之外的病人下结论一样，”保罗.皮拉说。他是前CIA反恐中心副主任和首席分析师，目前任教于乔治敦大学。上月刚从布什政府国土安全委员会主席位置退下来的弗朗西斯.弗拉格斯.汤森德也表示：“我也读过你说的那些自相矛盾的拉登死亡报告。那些报告个顶个的扯淡。”
　　CIA一直对这些批评不以为然。“我找不到任何人证实该报告或是其中的逻辑分析的存在，”CIA发言人保罗.吉米利亚诺称，“所谓来自CIA的匿名言论不能表示CIA真正持有那些观点。”
　　如果拉登真的快玩完了，毫无疑问一些矛盾心理将在舆论中产生。一方面，拉登的死是美国政府热切期盼已久的——甚至始于911事件之前。可“死于肾病”却并非美国政府所愿。“若是在山姆大叔费了九牛二虎之力以后，拉登最终病死而非死在联军手上，这难道不是一种遗憾吗？”一位现任高级反恐官员表示。就算“悬丝诊脉”的结论是真的，反观基地组织在全世界不停发出的死亡威胁，拉登到底怎么个死法不应该成为美国最关注的事情。