HAVE WE CAPTURED BIN LADEN?: Much as we here at &c. hate to traffic in rumor and innuendo, we, along with every other journalist in Washington, or in the country for that matter, are picking up some strong indications that the White House is set to announce the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden.
So far, here's the circumstantial evidence suggesting this might be true: (1) ABC News reports today that captured Al Qaeda official Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has yielded so much good information that bin Laden's capture may be imminent. (2) The president has called a last-minute press conference for tonight at 8:00 p.m., and Ari Fleischer has said that the case for attacking Iraq will not be the primary focus of the president's comments. (We're not sure about the timing of items (1) and (2), but if ABC obtained the information in (1) before the White House announced (2), that would be telling, no?) (3) As Mickey Kaus has wondered: If intelligence gleaned from Mohammed was our best shot at tracking bin Laden down, why did the White House allow news of Mohammed's capture to leak out to the press so quickly, giving bin Laden ample warning to clear out of any hideout Mohammed might know about. Kaus answered his own question by citing a USA Today article suggesting it was Pakistani, not American, authorities who leaked the story. But maybe the real answer is that U.S. and Pakistani agents already more or less had bin Laden in their crosshairs by the time the Mohammed story broke.
The major pieces of circumstantial evidence pointing in the other direction are: (1) Wouldn't you expect the announcement of any hastily-convened presidential press conference shortly after the capture of a top-ranking Al Qaeda to lead to speculation that bin Laden himself had been caught, even if there were no factual basis for that claim whatsoever? (2) When asked specifically about bin Laden's capture at his press briefing this morning, Fleischer basically laughed it off. And, as one reporter who was at the briefing suggests, if the administration had really captured bin Laden and was set to announce it this evening, wouldn't you expect Fleischer to be much more sober and circumspect about the whole thing?
On the other hand, it's possible that Fleischer, knowing people would expect him to be more sober and circumspect, came up with the jokey shtick to throw reporters off the trail. And he didn't actually deny it....
UPDATE: FOX News has reported (via The Hotline) that the White House did not formally ask the major networks to carry tonight's press conference live... Seems like a pretty important indication that we're not going to get that bin Laden announcement today. Or at least that the White House wasn't confident we were going to get it when it called the press conference this morning.
posted 2:15 p.m.
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