yeah, yeah... OBL is in Pakistan, but the ironic part is at the end where "Col. Parker" mentions "Elvis".... get it? Colonel Parker and Elvis.... Newsweek: Reports Say Bin Laden Healthy, Inside Pakistan; 'Al Qaeda Network is Active' There Story Filed: Sunday, May 05, 2002 11:46 AM EST NEW YORK, May 05, 2002 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The Afghan chief of military intelligence, Hazrat Uddin, says he has received "credible reports" that terror leader Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenant Ayman al Zawahiri, were seen inside Pakistan, Newsweek reports in the current issue. The source said bin Laden trimmed his beard and appeared healthy, Uddin tells Newsweek. A second Afghan commander, Kamal Khan Zadran, says he thinks Osama's men are trying to keep their leader safe inside Pakistan. "The local al Qaeda network is active," he says. "They're working out their plans." While there are false sightings of bin Laden every day and there's no solid proof he's even alive, privately, many terrorism experts think Uddin is on the right track, reports Correspondent-at-Large Rod Nordland in the May 13 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, May 6). Both Uddin and Zadran are stationed in the Afghan city of Khowst, just over the mountain pass from Miram Shah, a corner of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, east of Afghanistan. Foreign troops are said to be roaming through that high country, Nordland reports. Also in Khowst, an Afghan intelligence official in daily contact with the Americans says an operation launched April 30 called Mountain Lion -- using British, Australian and U.S. 101st Airborne commandos to seek out possible al Qaeda hideouts -- will expand into a major offensive on both sides of the border. "They have a plan to go into Miram Shah to do an operation," he says. "There are 1,200 Americans and Brits in the tribal areas right now. They're working very hard. They're in a hurry." Officially, the Pentagon says there are no foreign troops inside Pakistan other than some logistical support personnel and it won't even say where the commandos are searching. Inside Afghanistan, at a remote smuggler's crossing called Ghulam Khan, the local Afghan commander Mohammed Yaqoob has a wireless connection to an American handler identified only as Jim. Yaqoob says the Americans have been running missions into Pakistan for weeks now, Nordland reports. "The Americans collect weapons and arrest many people from the Pakistan side and bring them back," says one of Yaqoob's fighters, Jalal Khan. "There were some important people, some commanders and some foot soldiers." And bin Laden remains elusive. "He's kind of like Elvis," says Col. Wayland Parker, the U.S. military's liaison between coalition forces and the British-led international security force in Kabul. "He's here, he's dead, he's there, he's alive. The last time we felt sure about where, he was in Tora Bora. After that, he drops off the radar screen." (--just like the real Elvis -rH)
