Tuesday, October 8, 2002; Page A18

U.S. intelligence experts say they believe it was Osama bin Laden's voice on a two-minute audiotape released Sunday by the Qatar-based television station al-Jazeera, but the recording gives no clue as to whether the head of the al Qaeda terrorist network is alive, according to a senior administration official.

"We cannot date when the tape was made," the official said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday that if bin Laden were alive, "there would be many ways that one could easily indicate that they were alive and that the tape had been made recently." But he added, "I am told it does not indicate that."

Reflecting the view of the U.S. intelligence community, Rumsfeld said he had "not seen anything since last December that one can with certainty say that he's alive or functioning. So he's therefore either alive and well, or alive and not too well, or not alive."

Rumsfeld said that scraps of information indicate Taliban leader Mohammad Omar is "probably still alive" and that a worldwide hunt is on for 15 or 20 high-ranking Taliban and al Qaeda operatives whose status is unknown. "We don't know precisely what's happened to them," Rumsfeld said.

He added that news leaks about how the U.S.-led search is being run had damaged the search effort, leading the terrorists "to change their behavior patterns in ways that it makes it very difficult to find them."

Meanwhile, he said, investigators have learned from those who have been captured that it is harder for them to do things and "their lives are more difficult."

-- Walter Pincus

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2002