13 Nov 2008

Obama administration to ratchet up hunt for bin Laden

President-elect Barack Obama wants to renew the U.S. commitment to finding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to his national security advisers.

The Obama team believes the Bush administration has downplayed the importance of catching the FBI's most-wanted terrorist because it has not been able to find him.

"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Obama said during the presidential debate on October 7.

But tracking down bin Laden won't be easy.

Osama bin Laden in the 2004 video (l) and the 2007 video (r) (AFP)

Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, told CNN he's talked to "a dozen CIA guys who've been on the hunt for him, and half of them told me they assumed he was dead, the other half said they assumed he was alive, but the key word here is assume. They don't know."  CNN.com