bin Laden was allowed to get away, eh? We've known for a long time

SY HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, 10, maybe 12 more-- or more heavily weighted-- Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated-- no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe mmore. I've heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only-- Al Qaeda but they were also-- you see the Pakistani ISI was-- the military advised us to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out.

And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden's immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation.

JANE WALLACE: How high up was that evacuation authorized?

SY HERSH: I am here to tell you it was authorized — Donald Rumsfeld who — we'll talk about what he said later — it had to be authorized at the White House. But certainly at the Secretary of Defense level.

Musharraf told the BBC that Pakistani forces had come close to bin Laden: "There was a time when the dragnet had closed, and we thought we knew roughly the area where he possibly could be," he said. "That was, I think, some time back ... maybe about eight to 10 months back."

The Pakistani government launched a military campaign in the previously autonomous border area of South Waziristan during the last two years. There were numerous clashes, 48 by the government's count, between the military and what it called al Qaeda militants.

The result? More than 250 government troops were killed, according to a Pakistani official. But that campaign is over, and the troops are largely gone from the border area.

"No one knows where bin Laden is," Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said last Sunday. So maybe we should ask the Pentagon. According to a number of leaks by Pentagon officials, bin Laden is hiding in South Waziristan, in the Pakistani tribal areas, not far from the Toba Kakar mountain range in Baluchistan province. Khan seemed to be startled by this revelation: "We are getting in touch with them to clarify this matter." Don't ask the Pakistani military. Major General Shaukat Sultan has said they have been pursuing all of the Pentagon's leads, to no avail. So maybe we should ask Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. In a recent interview with NBC he referred to "some broad indications" to proclaim he was "reasonably sure" that bin Laden is alive and absolutely sure he would be captured or killed. But he "didn't know his location".

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According to Musharraf, "there's no pressure" on him by the White House and the Pentagon to find bin Laden. "What pressure? he asked in his NBC interview. "Their leadership, a few high level, and others mid and low level have been arrested - then we have attacked them in the mountains. We have attacked three of their very big sanctuaries in the valleys in the South Waziristan agency in tribal areas - but they're on the run now. And they're in smaller groups. Maybe there are a few more concentrations, which we don't know. But they are on the run, as far as al-Qaeda is concerned, they're on their own, surely."

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On November 17, 2001, as the Taliban regime was self-disintegrating, Osama bin Laden, his family and a convoy of 25 Toyota Land Cruisers left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan headed toward the mountains of Tora Bora. In late November, surrounded by his fiercest and most loyal Yemeni mujahideen in a cold Tora Bora cave, bin Laden delivered a stirring speech. One of his fighters, Abu Bakar, later captured by Afghan mujahideen, said bin Laden exhorted them to "hold your positions firm and be ready for martyrdom. I'll be visiting you again very soon."

A few days later, around what would probably have been November 30, bin Laden, along with four Yemeni mujahideen, left Tora Bora toward the village of Parachinar, in the Pakistani tribal areas. They walked undisturbed all the way - and then disappeared forever.