When someone says one thing but does another, always believe what they do: The CIA disbanded their Bin Laden unit (Alec Station) in 2005. If they truly believed he was still alive, they wouldn't have decided that those resources were better used elsewhere.
Secondly, I've yet to see a tape that is in any way convincing. A 12 minute freeze up? Why not just re-shoot the tape if it wasn't impossible?
Why not have a tape of OBL holding up a copy of yesterday's Hyderabad Times saying "I'd like to congratulate the Pittsburgh Penguins on their 5-4 shoot out victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. We may or may not be about to unleash a wave of suicide bombings in U.S. shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season."
So long as you don't have absolute proof that he's dead, it makes sense to continue to function (at least publicly) as if he's still alive, but I believe they pretty well know he's dead.
Owl_Eagle
When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didnt just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
Look, heres what happened."
-Slow Joe Biden
Do you seriously believe the CIA disbanded units looking for AQ HVTs? A TF name change alone would allow for the silly/irrelevant stories about Alec Station.