The Hunt for Bin Laden
LEMON: Nine years to the day, the man behind the attacks on September 11th remains free. Osama bin Laden, today, has a $27 million bounty on his head. CNN's Nic Robertson shows us how the head of al Qaeda has eluded capture and assassination through the years.</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Late in 2001, U.S. bombs fell on Tora Bora in Afghanistan, al Qaeda's last holdout. Osama bin Laden escaped. His whereabouts, until now, thought to be a mystery.</s>PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: There was an ability in western intelligence to track his movements for a number of years to identify the people that he was meeting, to identify his role in certain plots.</s>ROBERTSON: CNN terrorism analyst, Paul Cruickshank, has new information on bin Laden's movements from a former senior European intelligence official who had an informant close to the al Qaeda leader.</s>CRUICKSHANK: Western intelligence was able to actually draw up a map between 2003 and 2004 of where bin Laden was moving around.</s>ROBERTSON: The new information reveals this video would have been no surprise for intelligence agencies. The informant was telling them bin Laden was quickly regrouping al Qaeda leaders -- even meeting with the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before his arrest in 2003.</s>CRUICKSHANK: He starts to communicate again with some of his top al Qaeda lieutenants. He meets with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the period after 9/11. He meets frequently with Ayman al-Zawahiri.</s>ROBERTSON: But despite the flow of information from the Pakistan- Afghan border, there were immense frustrations. The source was unable to obtain actionable information on bin Laden's movement and the al Qaeda leader kept on the move constantly.</s>CRUICKSHANK: The closest they got was a sort of a week away from where he was. So, they were never able to call in a strike.</s>ROBERTSON: By 2006, bin Laden seemed to be settling down. His video and audio messages were more frequent and he was clearly more comfortable. And for reasons unknown, the informant's intelligence dried up. But contrary to conventional wisdom that bin Laden's trail is dead, Cruickshank's source says otherwise.</s>CRUICKSHANK: It's unclear what the quality of the intelligence that's coming in. But there is intelligence on his movements which continues to come in and being analyzed all the time.</s>ROBERTSON: Indeed, the source says the evidence suggests that all these years later, bin Laden and Zawahiri are still in close communication, directing al Qaeda, and often, not far apart. The trail has not gone entirely cold. Nic Robertson, CNN, London.</s>LEMON: A new generation of leaders to follow Osama bin Laden. Tonight, a CNN special report shows us who they are. Stay tuned for "Bin Laden's New Jihadists." Tonight at 8:00 Eastern, only here on CNN. We're going to get right back to the Ground Zero story in just a moment after -- marking today's ceremonies in just a bit. And children being trained to survive armed attacks on a school -- you'll see where it's happening.