Just a phone call away
U.S. officials pay out millions to tipsters for help finding terrorists
State's diplomatic security agents find that they have to sift through a bizarre range of tips, many of them frivolous. Several people, for instance, have called to report that bin Laden is somewhere on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border--and then demanded payment. "It ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous," says Taylor, "but we follow every lead that comes in." Some informants may themselves operate on the criminal fringe. But that's not a disqualification; nor do officials rule out paying mercenaries. "I don't want to give the impression that we will pay bounty hunters to kill them," says Taylor, "but we will pay for information."
In fact, informants have even earned rewards for helping capture terrorists who never made the most-wanted list. Three days after the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, the makeshift U.S. command post logged a telephone call from an anonymous source reporting a stranger who was wounded in the bombing but could not communicate with the locals and was acting suspiciously. After calling back several times, the source agreed to monitor the man's movements (a risky plan) and eventually pointed him out to investigators. Mohamed al-Owali, who turned out to be one of the bombers, was arrested and is now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison. For his help, the informant eventually received a $3.5 million reward.
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