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President George W. Bush called the attacks an “act of war” and vowed to hunt the terrorists down. Within hours, US intelligence officials had identified all the hijackers along with the architect of the attack—Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian millionaire who ran the al-Qaeda terrorist organization from a secret camp in Afghanistan. The attacks spurred the United States and its allies into action. The US,

along with members of the North Atlantic Treaty Or- ganization (NATO), invaded Afghanistan weeks later in an effort to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the country’s fanatical rulers who provided bin Laden and his followers with safe haven. Weeks after arriving in Afghanistan, US troops tracked bin Laden to remote Tora Bora, a valley

Report on Tora Bora

wedged between snow-covered mountains and separated by deep streams southeast of Kabul, the Afghan capital. Dimpled with caves, Tora Bora was a virtually impregnable hideout that covered an area of roughly six square miles. Although they believed bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora, US forces did not direct the assault to flush him out. Instead, the US relied on their Afghan allies to lead the attack. By the time the battle was over, however, bin Laden was gone, escaping on horseback into the desert. Efforts during the next 10 years to find the terrorist leader proved futile. Now, in a white house in a little-known Pakistani town, the CIA believed they finally had their man.

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