Case against bin Laden: how definitive?

They lived in groups of two or three, in nondescript rooms at places with names like Sandpiper Apartments, or Pin Del Motel.

Some were friendly. Some weren't. They were the type of people who might stop by an acquaintance's place for a cookie and a chat, but not stay long.

They ate pizza, bought sunglasses at local malls, used the weights at nearby gyms. A few had been in and out of the United States for years. The most remarkable thing about them may have been how unremarkable they were - until the last minutes of their lives.

Two weeks after devastating terrorist attacks struck the United States, the mammoth federal probe into who was behind them, and why, has made considerable progress.

Using a paper trail of plane tickets, bank records, and visa applications, investigators have developed a detailed picture of the 19 hijackers' loosely coordinated cells. Evidence made public suggests at least a circumstantial link with Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network.

But officials haven't revealed any hard proof that the attacks were Mr. bin Laden's handiwork, either because they do not yet have it or because they are withholding it due to its sensitive nature. Their investigation has now entered the difficult phase of tracking terrorism's middle management: the intricate web of more senior operatives who may have provided cash and direction to attack cells.

"Just the amount and the extent of coordination and planning suggests there are higher-ups involved," says James Larry Taulbee, an Emory University political scientist and expert on terrorism.

Code named PENTTBOM, the FBI's bombing investigation is a massive law-enforcement response to the most deadly terrorist attacks ever. Directed from the agency's bunker-like main operations room beneath its downtown Washington headquarters, it involves some 4,000 agents and 3,000 analysts.

Its reach has already spanned the oceans. French authorities arrested seven Islamic militants suspected of anti-US activities in dawn raids on Sept. 21. Germany has issued arrest warrants for two similar suspects. Over the weekend, British authorities arrested three people in connection with the attacks. Spain and the Czech Republic are investigating recent and unexplained visits to their territory by a leader of the hijackers themselves - Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian thought to have been aboard American Airlines Flight 11 as it slammed into a World Trade Center tower.

Four potentially important material witnesses are already in US custody. (A material witness is a person thought to have information about the crime.) Two, identified as Ayub Ali Kahn and Mohammed Jawid Azmath, were arrested aboard an Amtrak train in Texas the day after the attacks. They were allegedly passengers on an American Airlines flight from Newark to San Antonio that landed in St. Louis after the FAA grounded aircraft on the day of the attacks. A third, Habib Zacarias Moussaoui, was already in jail in Minnesota on immigration charges, after attracting attention through suspicious activity at a local flight school.

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