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You never hear about people like Sheila Horan until something truly terrible happens. But after more than two decades in the FBI's secretive national-security division, she knows her way around terrorism. And now she has been thrust into one of the most difficult manhunts in her career, as on-the-scene boss of the investigation in East Africa that the U.S. hopes will one day nail down the names and addresses of the terrorists who ruthlessly massacred 257 innocents and wounded more than 5,000 in the twin bombings of the U.S. embassies. Agent Horan found herself in Nairobi last week presiding over a makeshift command center in the partly wrecked railway station bus park across from the embassy. Her task: to supervise 215 FBI agents in both capitals, along with explosives experts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, as they sort through concrete rubble, twisted metal, bits of glass--every scrap of debris that could yield the vital physical evidence that might identify who was responsible for the senseless violence.
It could take weeks before investigators confirm the most basic facts. After nearly seven days of digging, Horan was able to announce one tiny step forward: pieces of the vehicle that carried the Nairobi bomb had been found. The first planeloads of material evidence were sent to Washington for analysis over the weekend. Investigators expect to spend an additional four weeks conducting at least 700 interviews in Kenya, while Horan's deputy leads other agents through a similar process in Tanzania.
Already speculation is focusing on one man who is thought likely to be behind the bombings: Osama bin Laden, a militant Muslim multimillionaire. Bin Laden's outspoken screeds against America and suspected involvement in many of the most spectacular terrorist assaults of the '90s have earned him the reputation of a virtual Dr. No whose tentacles extend to almost every secret cell around the globe. Though he has denied responsibility for some of the attacks, bin Laden is still widely considered the world's prime villain after the legendary terrorist Carlos the Jackal; the State Department last year labeled bin Laden "one of the most significant sponsors of Sunni Islamic terrorist groups." He seeks to overthrow the Saudi royal family and drive U.S. forces out of Saudi Arabia, away from its holy cities, Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden is nearly everyone's favorite suspect this time too--largely because he is the obvious one. Newsday reported on Sunday that a relatively low-level associate of bin Laden may have been identified by an embassy guard as having been in the truck carrying the bomb in Nairobi. Clinton aides are looking at contingency plans for covert operations to capture bin Laden from his reputed high-tech lair deep inside Afghanistan.
Over the weekend, FBI agents were flying to Pakistan to interview one Mohammed Sadique, 32, who, according to a Pakistani newspaper, was detained at the Karachi airport on Aug. 7 because his passport appeared faked. Sadique then reportedly admitted involvement in the plot and attempting to link up in Afghanistan with two other returning co-conspirators. The scheme, said the paper, had received help from people sympathetic to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group reportedly financed by bin Laden and linked to the assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. U.S. investigators are taking the allegations seriously but, says one senior American official, there are "no guarantees" that Sadique's claims are true. Only when the Pakistani and Egyptian leads are run to ground, when the composition of the bombs is known, when the delivery vehicles have been precisely identified, can the U.S. know where to lay the blame.
Without such evidence, no matter how much investigators might believe in bin Laden's guilt, the U.S. would have no way to bring him to justice. "We don't have enough to stand up in front of the American people and say he or his henchmen have done it," says a U.S. official. "Whether we ever have enough that withstands the test of law to take them to trial, that's a different question."
--Reported by Peter Hawthorne /Dar Es Salaam, Scott Macleod /Paris, Clive Mutiso /Nairobi and Elaine Shannon And Douglas Waller /Washington
"...but have been unable to identify any foreign government who would pay millions of dollars in contributions to the Democrat National Committee to make it worth their while to do so, so the planning has been shelved. 'Well, there has to be something in it for us,' White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said. 'If we can't find a foreign government--or even a shadowy multi-national business cartel--who wants bin Laden out of the way enough to pay us to do it, it's just not worth it for us. The President is very emphatic about this; there has to be a quid pro quo.'"