Here are all of the articles I have that says Osama Bin Laden may be dead.

If even one of them are right, what does that say about the Bin Laden video/audio that's been released?

Report: Bin Laden Already Dead

Source: foxnews.com

Wednesday, December 26, 2001

Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

"The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said.

Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.

About 30 close associates of bin Laden in Al Qaeda, including his most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members and some "Taliban friends," attended the funeral rites. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to the "great leader."

The Taliban source who claims to have seen bin Laden's face before burial said "he looked pale ... but calm, relaxed and confident."

Asked whether bin Laden had any feelings of remorse before death, the source vehemently said "no." Instead, he said, bin Laden was proud that he succeeded in his mission of igniting awareness amongst Muslims about hegemonistic designs and conspiracies of "pagans" against Islam. Bin Laden, he said, held the view that the sacrifice of a few hundred people in Afghanistan was nothing, as those who laid their lives in creating an atmosphere of resistance will be adequately rewarded by Almighty Allah.

When asked where bin Laden was buried, the source said, "I am sure that like other places in Tora Bora, that particular place too must have vanished."

Pakistan's Musharraf: Bin Laden probably dead

Source: cnn.com

January 18, 2002 Posted: 10:34 PM EST (0334 GMT)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease.

"I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a ... kidney patient," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on Friday in an interview with CNN.

Musharraf said Pakistan knew bin Laden took two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. "One was specifically for his own personal use," he said.

"I don't know if he has been getting all that treatment in Afghanistan now. And the photographs that have been shown of him on television show him extremely weak. ... I would give the first priority that he is dead and the second priority that he is alive somewhere in Afghanistan."

U.S. officials skeptical
In Washington, a senior Bush administration official said Musharraf reached "reasonable conclusion" but warned it is only a guess.

"He is using very reasonable deductive reasoning, (but) we don't know (bin Laden) is dead," said the official, who requested anonymity. "We don't have remains or evidence of his death. So it is a decent and reasonable conclusion -- a good guess but it is a guess."

The official said U.S. intelligence is that bin Laden needs dialysis every three days and "it is fairly obvious that that could be an issue when you are running from place to place, and facing the idea of needing to generate electricity in a mountain hideout."

Other U.S. officials contradicted the reports of bin Laden's health problems, saying there is "no evidence" the suspected terrorist mastermind has ever suffered kidney failure or required kidney dialysis. The officials called such suggestions a "recurrent rumor."

Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in central and southwest Asia, said Friday that he had not seen any intelligence confirming or denying Musharraf's statements on bin Laden's condition.

The United States has said that bin Laden is the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed about 3,000 people.

Hunt for bin Laden
The United States launched its campaign in Afghanistan after the country's ruling Taliban refused to turn over bin Laden.

Earlier this week U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he believed bin Laden and Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar were inside Afghanistan but "we are looking at some other places as well from time to time."

Rumsfeld noted there were dozens of conflicting intelligence reports each day and said most of them were wrong. Most of the reports are based on sightings by local Afghans that cannot be verified.

There are reports that bin Laden and his convoys have been sighted recently by a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle.

A senior Defense Department source said the lack of credible information about the two was so severe that many officials believe the U.S. would catch bin Laden or Omar only through pure luck, or an "intelligence break" -- essentially one of their associates turning them in.

Top CIA analysts who track bin Laden and Omar have been asked for their best assessment on the two men's whereabouts. That has led to a variety of thoughts, placing bin Laden in Afghanistan, in Pakistan or Iran, on the open ocean onboard a ship, or headed north through Tajikistan or Uzbekistan -- if he is still alive.

The videotape seen worldwide several weeks ago of bin Laden talking about the September 11 attacks was made in Kandahar. He then apparently disappeared -- possibly going north to Tora Bora.

Franks said there was evidence bin Laden was in Tora Bora but he gave no indication of when that might have been. In October, intelligence officials thought they had bin Laden pinned down to a 10-square-mile area in the eastern central mountains of Afghanistan.

Two senior military officers told CNN it would not have been hard for bin Laden to change location several times because vast areas of Afghanistan are virtually unseen by the U.S. military, and he would have been even harder to spot if he moved without his telltale large security contingent.

Even before the war, bin Laden moved around frequently, making it difficult for the United States to determine his location and launch an attack against him.

Bin Laden 'probably' dead

Source: BBC

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation's counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, says he thinks Osama bin Laden is "probably" dead.

It is thought to be the first time a senior US law-enforcement official has publicly offered an opinion on whether Bin Laden, the prime suspect believed to be behind the 11 September attacks, is dead or alive.

"Is (Bin Laden) alive or is he dead?" Mr Watson said. "I am not really sure of the answer... I personally think he is probably not with us anymore but I have no evidence to support that."

The remarks, made at a law-enforcement conference in Washington on Wednesday, follow recent statements from both an Arabic newspaper editor and the chief of German foreign intelligence that Bin Laden is still alive.

But Mr Watson's comments suggest that the FBI, at least, has no firsthand information that confirms Bin Laden is still alive.

Other US officials told the Associated Press they were surprised by Mr Watson's remarks, as Washington's official position remains that it does not know where Bin Laden is, or whether he is still alive.

Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al Arabi newspaper, said this week that the leader of the al-Qaeda leader is in good health, but had been wounded in an attack on his base in Afghanistan last December.

Mr Atwan said Bin Laden's followers had told him that he would not make more video statements until his group launches another attack on the United States.

Mr Atwan is one of few journalists to have interviewed Bin Laden before the US attacks.

Last week, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency also said Bin Laden was alive and believed to be hiding in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

[B]'New attacks'[/B]
August Hanning told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that the wanted Saudi dissident was still very much a key figure within the al-Qaeda terror network.

"Given the information we have we are convinced that Bin Laden is still alive," he said.

"He is still the figurehead of al-Qaeda, but doesn't appear to move around very much."

Mr Hanning said that an estimated 5,000 al-Qaeda operatives still remained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while others had returned to their countries of origin to plan new attacks.

"They are preparing new attacks from their new locations," he said.

Karzai: bin Laden 'probably' dead

Source: cnn.com

Monday, October 7, 2002 Posted: 2:34 AM EDT (0634 GMT)

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Osama bin Laden is "probably" dead, but former Taliban leader Mullah Omar is alive, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said.

Karzai's comments came on the eve of the anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan as part of the war on terrorism.

The campaign ousted the Taliban regime, which the United States said harbored bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorism network, the group blamed for the September 11 attacks.

"I would come to believe that [bin Laden] probably is dead," Karzai said on CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday.

"But still, you never know. He might be alive. Five months ago, six months ago, I was thinking that he was alive.

"The more we don't hear of him, and the more time passes, there is the likelihood that he probably is either dead or seriously wounded somewhere."

But he said Omar is certainly alive. "We know of that," he said. "And we have come close to arresting him several times, but he's been able to escape."

U.S. forces also have searched for Omar.

Karzai, leader of Afghanistan's interim government, said Omar is a difficult man to track down "because nobody knows him by face. Nobody can recognize him. If you came across him today, somewhere in Afghanistan or in the rest of the world, you wouldn't recognize him. So that's part of the problem with him.

"I believe he is most of the time inside Afghanistan. He could go, from time to time, toward our borders, but he stays around the Afghan area, sometimes close to the borders," Karzai said.

No threat
He contended the Taliban, which the United States designated a "terrorist" group, is a minimal threat to his government.

"They are now a group on the run. They are no longer a government. They are no longer a political movement. They are no longer a reality in Afghanistan," Karzai said.

"We don't see them as a danger in any way, of course. As a terrorist organization, as terrorist individuals, they may try to strike and they may try to assassinate or shoot people or lob bombs. That kind of activity they can do, but not a political or military threat anymore."

Karzai, who was the target of an assassination attempt September 5, said the perpetrator has been identified and is "someone very, very close to the Taliban."

He insisted he is not afraid for his life: "I trust God's keeping, and when he decides I'll not be here anymore, that will be the moment. Before that, I have no fears."

Karzai said U.S. and allied forces are helping to stabilize and keep Afghanistan "away from dangers," partly by training Afghan security forces.

But "there are other areas in which the international community has not delivered the promises that they made, especially in the reconstruction of the basic infrastructure of Afghanistan."

Karzai said his country has not received the economic support it expected from the international community for rebuilding efforts.

It is not clear how much longer the United States and its allies will need to keep a military presence in Afghanistan, Karzai said. But "at this point, I think it will be very, very unwise to think that Afghanistan can be left alone."

In the midst of a U.S. debate over possible military action against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, Karzai said he is unconcerned that the United States might shift its attention from Afghanistan to that country.

President Bush's administration has threatened Iraq with military action, accusing it of expanding and developing weapons of mass destruction.

"But I would like to remind our friends in the United States and in the international community that we have to really finish the job in Afghanistan completely," Karzai said.

Israeli intelligence: Bin Laden is dead, heir has been chosen

Source: worldtribune.com

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

TEL AVIV — Osama Bin Laden appears to be dead but his colleagues have decided that Al Qaida and its insurgency campaign against the United States will continue, Israeli intelligence sources said.

Al Qaida terrorists have launched a new campaign of economic warfare and are targeting shipping in the Middle East, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The Israeli sources said Israel and the United States assess that Bin Laden probably died in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan in December. They said the emergence of new messages by Bin Laden are probably fabrications, Middle East Newsline reported.

But Bin Laden's heir has been chosen and his colleagues have decided to resume Al Qaida's offensive against the United States and Western allies, the sources said.

They said the organization regards the United States as the main target followed by Israel.

"In this case, it doesn't matter whether Bin Laden is alive or not," a senior Israeli intelligence source said. "The organization goes on with help from key people."

The sources said Al Qaida has already determined Bin Laden's heir. They said the heir has not been identified, but is probably not Bin Laden's son, Saad. Saad is said to be in his 20s and ranked within the top 20 members of Al Qaida.

Earlier this week, Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, was said to have released a videotape in which he claims that the Al Qaida leader is alive and functioning. Bin Laden's voice was not heard on the tape.

A senior Bush administration economic official said last week that another major Al Qaida attack anywhere in the world could have devastating economic repercussions.

The FBI warned last week that Al Qaida may be preparing for a major attack. The warning followed the release of an audio tape featuring the voice of Zawahiri.

Bombings in Bali aimed at tourists, an attack on U.S. soldiers training in Kuwait and the bombing of a French tanker in Yemen are signs of the new campaign, Geostrategy-Direct.com reported in its Oct. 22 edition.

The first attack was carried out last week with the Al Qaida terrorist attack on the French tanker Limburg, a 157,000-ton ultra large crude oil carrier, that was bombed as it picked up a pilot before mooring at the Yemeni port of al Shihr.

One crew member was killed and others were injured in the blast.

According to intelligence officials, a small boat approached at high speed from the starboard side of the ship and detonated a large explosive device.

A week earlier, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued an alert to ships in the Middle East to be alert for Al Qaida terrorist attacks.

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead And Buried: Multan Newspaper

Source: southasia.net

10/23/2005

A Pakistani newspaper Ausaf published from Multan has reported that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden died four months ago in a village near Kandahar of severe illness.

According to the newspaper report, Bin Laden was campaigning at Bamiyan, fell very ill, returned to Kandahar where he died and was buried in the Shada graveyard in the shadow of a mountain.

The controversy continues to surround Osama bin Laden and while US and Pakistan officials have often been quoted by the media as saying that his mortal status was just a matter of detail, the hunt is still on and the issue remains a topic of great interest for the media and governments alike.

Funeral prayers have been said for Osama bin Laden over these years with one reported now by the Ausaf, and another in an Egyptian newspaper Al Wafd as far back as December 2001.

Osama bin Laden has a reward of $25 million on his head. Despite this he remains elusive, and could remain that way for a long time, alive or dead.

Weldon 9/11 tale unravels, but wait
Congressman has more allegations, one on bin Laden.

Source: philly.com

By Chris Mondics and Steve Goldstein
Inquirer Washington Bureau
3/15/2006

WASHINGTON - Late one night in June, Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.) stood up in a largely empty House chamber and made an incendiary charge.

With dramatic rhetorical flourish, he said that a secret military intelligence program called Able Danger fingered Mohamed Atta and two other al-Qaeda hijackers before the 9/11 attacks - and that the government had failed to act.

"Not only did our military identify the Mohamed Atta cell, our military made a recommendation in September of 2000 to bring in the FBI to take out the cell of Mohamed Atta," he said.

Within days of the attacks, he said, he gave the same information - a pre-9/11 chart with Atta's name - to Stephen Hadley, then deputy national security adviser, to show how the government dropped the ball.

But Weldon's story, which unleashed a wave of national media attention as well as probes and congressional hearings, is unraveling.

He now says that he's not sure the chart had a picture of Atta, as he has sometimes maintained, and that he has been relying on the memory of an intelligence analyst who helped produce it.

Meanwhile, other key players in the story, including Hadley, contradict Weldon, saying they never saw Atta's picture. Moreover, several government investigations have failed to find any documentation so far that the program had identified hijackers before the attacks, and Weldon has begun to allow that there are parts of his story that may not be proven.

Yet even as his story triggers more and more questions, Weldon is making explosive new allegations. He says a high-level source has told him that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden has died in Iran, where he has been in hiding.

He also maintains that the Bush administration suppressed information about the Able Danger program out of concern it might be embarrassed by disclosures that it failed to follow up leads that might have helped avert the plot.

"Am I going to take on something that is a challenge? Absolutely," Weldon said in a lengthy interview last week. "I'm not here to kiss people's butts. I'm here to do what's right. And if sometimes that means I have to push someone, well what are we here for?"

Weldon's allegations are the latest in a long skein of alarming scenarios that the Delaware County congressman has unspooled as he has sought to draw attention to what he seems to fervently believe are the nation's military and intelligence vulnerabilities.

On occasion, Weldon has turned out to be well ahead of the curve, as he was in the mid-1980s when he contended that the Soviet Union was violating an antiballistic-missile treaty by deploying a radar system that could be used as part of a defense to shoot down enemy rockets. And he appeared prescient with a prediction that the Russians would threaten to cut off access to their vast energy supplies as a way of pressuring neighboring states to toe their strategic political and policy lines.

He made the prediction in 2004, nearly two years before the explosions in January that disrupted gas supplies to Georgia, sabotage for which the Russians were prime suspects.

But often Weldon's nightmare scenarios seem little more than daydreams.

That was the case last year when he said a source told him that the Iranian government had set in motion a plot to crash hijacked planes into the Seabrook reactor in New Hampshire. The CIA quickly debunked the story, saying Weldon's source was unreliable.

It was also the case in the mid-1990s when Weldon, working off information he obtained from a former Russian general, said the United States was potentially under threat from suitcase-size nuclear weapons that had been pilfered from the Soviet military. No proof has ever been found of the claim.

But Weldon's allegations regarding Able Danger have been particularly explosive. They are fuel to conspiracy theorists who believe that the 9/11 commission and the government suppressed information about the plot.

"I think it will embarrass the administration," Weldon said of the Able Danger revelations.

His allegations have triggered congressional hearings and even prompted attorneys for convicted al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui to request that Weldon testify at his sentencing trial. The defense has argued that Moussaoui should not be put to death for failing to inform the government of the 9/11 plot if the government itself had information that could have helped avert the attack.

Weldon's allegations also have engendered heated reaction from 9/11 commission members.

Bucks County resident John Lehman, a former commission member who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, said: "To believe the conspiracy theory that people are pushing on Able Danger, you have to believe that all of us, conservative Republicans and Democrats on the 9/11 commission, are in league with the Defense Department and the secretary of defense and the National Security Agency in a vast right- and left-wing conspiracy to cover this up. It is absurd to think that within our vast bureaucratic system, the conspirators were able to make disappear every piece of paper that ever existed on this."

The controversy began June 27 when Weldon gave his speech on the House floor. A few weeks later, the New York Times weighed in with a front-page article, giving credence to the account and setting off a wave of national attention.

Underlying Weldon's allegations was the implication that because the government was overly concerned with protecting civil liberties, even of non-U.S. citizens, it failed to follow up leads that might have helped halt the plot.

Eventually, Weldon brought forward two military officials, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, who had been involved in the Able Danger program, as well as a civilian employee of the program named J.D. Smith. They testified that they had identified Atta and other 9/11 hijackers in 1999 or 2000. Using sophisticated data-mining techniques, they employed powerful software and computers to sift through huge amounts of publicly available information to create a portrait of the al-Qaeda presence in the United States and around the world.

The fact that Phillpott and Shaffer were of relatively high rank and held responsible positions added weight to the allegations.

But problems soon began to develop with the story.

The 9/11 commission said its executive director, Philip Zelikow, and three others had met with Shaffer at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he was on assignment, in October 2003 as part of its probe. Contradicting Shaffer, the 9/11 commission said that during this meeting, he never mentioned that Able Danger had identified Atta and other hijackers before the plot, the commission said.

Commission members now believe it is a case of mistaken identity, because military data-mining programs before 9/11 produced charts with the names and pictures of other al-Qaeda members who were not part of the plot, but whose names and pictures resemble Atta's.

Other senior government officials and key players in the 9/11 aftermath also have raised questions about Weldon's account. A source familiar with a Senate Intelligence Committee probe of the issue said that committee had turned up no documentation to support Weldon's story.

Weldon has said Rep. Dan Burton (R., Ind.) went with him to Hadley's office to discuss the Able Danger program and to deliver the chart produced by the Able Danger team.

But a spokesman for Burton said that while he was at the meeting, he does not recall seeing Atta's name or picture on the chart.

Even so, the story has survived, reflecting the adage that it is impossible to prove that something didn't happen.

"How do you prove that pink elephants did not dance along your backyard last night?" said one frustrated former member of the 9/11 commission staff. "It would seem to me that if you are making an allegation, the burden of proof is on the person making the charges."

Said Weldon: "I don't know what the bottom-line answer is for Able Danger. All I want is the truth."

French paper says bin Laden died in Pakistan

Source: Reuters.com

Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:55am ET

PARIS (Reuters) - A French regional newspaper quoted a French secret service report on Saturday as saying that Saudi Arabia is convinced that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.

L'Est Republicain printed what it said was a copy of the report dated September 21 and said it was shown to President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France's interior and defense ministers on the same day.

"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead," the document said.

"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al Qaeda was a victim while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, of a very serious case of typhoid which led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."

The report, which was stamped with a "confidential defense" label and the initials of the French secret service, said Saudi Arabia first heard the information on September 4 and that it was waiting for more details before making an official announcement.

Officials contacted by Reuters in Chirac's and Villepin's offices had no immediate comment.

A senior official in Pakistan's interior ministry said: "We have no information about Osama's death."

Saudi-born Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan until the Taliban government there was overthrown by U.S.-backed forces in late 2001. Since then, U.S. and Pakistani officials have regularly said they believe he is hiding somewhere on the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The last videotaped message released by bin Laden was in late 2004, but there have been several low quality audio tapes released this year.

Chirac says no evidence bin Laden has died
French newspaper published details of alleged intelligence memo

Source: msnbc.com

9/23/2006

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac said Saturday that information contained in a leaked intelligence document raising the possibility that Osama bin Laden may have died of typhoid in Pakistan last month is “in no way whatsoever confirmed.”

Chirac said he was “a bit surprised” at the leak and has asked Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to probe how a document from a French foreign intelligence service was published in the French press.

The regional newspaper l’Est Republicain on Saturday printed what it described as a copy of a confidential document from the DGSE intelligence service citing an uncorroborated report from Saudi secret services that the leader of the al-Qaida terror network had died.

The DGSE transmitted the document, dated Sept. 21 or Thursday, to Chirac and other top French officials, the newspaper said.

“This information is in no way whatsoever confirmed,” Chirac said Saturday when asked about the document. “I have no comment.”

In Washington, CIA duty officer Paul Gimigliano said he could not confirm the DGSE report.

The Washington-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorism communications, said it was not aware of any similar reports on the Internet.

“We’ve seen nothing from any al-Qaida messaging or other indicators that would point to the death of Osama bin Laden,” IntelCenter director Ben N. Venzke told The Associated Press.

Last date known is June 29
Al-Qaida would likely release information of his death fairly quickly if it were true, said Venzke, whose organization also provides counterterrorism intelligence services for the American government.

“They would want to release that to sort of control the way that it unfolds. If they wait too long, they could lose the initiative on it,” he said.

The last time the IntelCenter says it could be sure bin Laden was alive was June 29, when al-Qaida released an audiotape in which the terror leader eulogized the death of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq earlier that month.

Chirac spoke at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Compiegne, France, where the leaders were holding a summit.

Putin suggested that leaks can be ways to manipulate. “When there are leaks ... one can say that (they) were done especially.”

Earlier the French defense ministry said it was opening an investigation into the leak.

“The information diffused this morning by the l’Est Republicain newspaper concerning the possible death of Osama bin Laden cannot be confirmed,” a Defense Ministry statement said.

The DGSE, or Direction Generale des Services Exterieurs, indicated that its information came from a single source.

“According to a reliable source, Saudi security services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead,” said the intelligence report.

There have been periodic reports of bin Laden’s illness or death in recent years but none has been proven accurate.

According to this report, Saudi security services were pursuing further details, notably the place of his burial.

“The chief of al-Qaida was a victim of a severe typhoid crisis while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006,” the document says. His geographic isolation meant that medical assistance was impossible, the French report said, adding that his lower limbs were allegedly paralyzed.

The report further said Saudi security services had their first information on bin Laden’s alleged death on Sept. 4.

In Pakistan, a senior official of that country’s top spy agency, the ISI or Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence, said he had no information to confirm bin Laden’s whereabouts or that he might be dead. The official said he believed the report could be fabricated. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic and spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. Embassy officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan also said they could not confirm the French report.

Gen. Henri Bentegeat, the French army chief of staff, said in a radio debate last Sunday that bin Laden’s fate remained a mystery.

“Today, bin Laden is certainly not in Afghanistan,” Bentegeat said. “No one is completely certain that he is even alive.”