Branded the most dangerous terrorist in the
                 world, hunted as public enemy No. 1 by the
                 most powerful nation on earth, Osama bin
                 Laden had inauspicious beginnings in an
                 auspicious family.
                      He is believed to be behind the 1998 bombings of two
                 U.S. embassies in East Africa, the 1993 bombing of the
                 World Trade Center in New York, and attacks on U.S.
                 troops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia. Osama bin
                 Mohammad bin Laden was born in 1957, in Riyadh,
                 Saudi Arabia, to a man who would come to own Saudi
                 Arabia’s largest construction company.
                      Osama’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, had moved
                 into the kingdom from Yemen and on the back of royal
                 patronage, became fabulously rich.
                      The bin Ladens came to be one of the leading families
                 in Saudi Arabia. Osama’s father took many wives, but
                 Osama was born to one of the last and least regarded of
                 these. He was the 17th son of a reported 50 children sired
                 by Mohammed.
                      Mohammed’s brother and business partner fathered
                 50 more, making the bin Laden family network huge —
                 but bin Laden himself would come to control a $250
                 million share of the family fortune.
                      It’s unclear how the younger bin Laden developed his
                 passion for religion, but siblings say it surfaced
                 prominently at an early age.
                      One report says Osama turned to God after his
                 father’s death in 1967 left him with little status. Others say
                 it surfaced when his family’s construction firm was
                 rebuilding holy mosques in the sacred cities of Mecca and
                 Medina.
                      Most sources however, agree that it was at King
                 Abdul Aziz University in Jedda, about 20 years ago, that
                 he experienced a religious breakthrough.
                      There, bin Laden studied management and economics.
                 But amidst the university’s atmosphere of intense Islamic
                 thought, he met an important influence, a teacher — Sheik
                 Abdallah Azzam.
                      A Palestinian, Azzam introduced bin Laden to the
                 intertwined worlds of Arab politics and religion. Azzam
                 was once a confidant of Yasser Arafat but had become
                 disenchanted with the Palestine Liberation Organization
                 chief. He began advocating a new jihad, or holy war,
                 against unbelievers.

                   “In terms of threats to the United States,
                  he’s certainly the major one. There’s been
                     no one like him who has that kind of
                                  money.”
                   Martha Crenshaw, specialist on terrorism and professor of
                     government at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.
 

                Afghanistan
                 In December 1979, bin Laden found a chance to express
                 his faith when Russia invaded Afghanistan.
                      He started as a logistics planner, funding and building
                 schools and shelters for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
                 From this point his profile began growing, as he used his
                 family’s contacts and expertise in the construction
                 business, and developed a reputation for being honest and
                 respectful.
                      By the mid-1980s, he had moved into Afghanistan
                 itself, building roads and tunneling hideouts for the Muslim
                 rebels, or mujahadeen, who resisted the Soviet invaders.
                 Israeli intelligence had even noticed bin Laden’s skills.
                      While in Afghanistan, bin Laden also contributed to
                 organizations designed to help the Afghan cause.
                      The best known of these groups would come to be
                 Azzam’s Maktab al-Khidamat, or Services Office, which
                 acted as a sort of recruiting center and clearinghouse for
                 Islamic charities worldwide. Ironically, in a 1998
                 indictment, the MAK would be identified as the root of a
                 supposed worldwide conspiracy against the interests of
                 the United States.
                      Gradually, bin Laden moved to fighting. The Soviets
                 even reportedly put a price on his head. Fighting in one of
                 the fiercest battles of the conflict, the siege of Jalalabad,
                 he was injured by shrapnel.
                      The battle eventually brought an end to Soviet
                 occupation in Afghanistan, but also left Azzam dead.

                    “If you’re going to declare war on bin
                   Laden, you better be prepared to kill him.
                   Otherwise, more Americans are going to
                                    die.”
                   Neil C. Livingstone, a Washington expert on terrorism who
                         supports the use of force against bin Laden.
 

                Bin Laden Goes Home
                 Bin Laden was widely honored as a hero upon returning
                 to his home in Saudi Arabia. He joined the family business
                 and founded a welfare organization for veterans of the
                 Afghan war. These men were soon volunteering for duty
                 in Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, the Philippines …
                 wherever Muslims took up a gun against non-believers.
                      But his experiences apparently left him cynical, and he
                 reportedly thought his country had stepped away from the
                 fundamentals of Islam.
                      The invasion of Kuwait in 1990 by Iraq and Saddam
                 Hussein’s threat to Saudi Arabia was the final straw. The
                 Saudi royal family allowed Americans — mostly
                 non-Muslims— in to protect the kingdom. Bin Laden
                 apparently considered this a pollution of the land of
                 Islam’s two holy places.
                      He became outspoken and critical of the Saudi royal
                 family, and when his opposition to the alliance with the
                 Americans became known, he was confined to Jedda. His
                 citizenship was revoked . In April 1991, he left Saudi
                 Arabia and by 1992 was in Khartoum, the capital of
                 Sudan.
                      In Sudan, bin Laden appeared to concentrate on
                 switching gears. He reportedly built a road from
                 Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, and apparently
                 farmed. Plenty of Afghans came to join him.
                      Bin Laden was certainly close to Egyptian radical
                 groups based in Khartoum — among them, Islamic Jihad.
                 Through an organization he funded in London, bin Laden
                 continued to call for radical change in Saudi Arabia. But
                 after years of continued criticism of the Saudi royal family,
                 his own family disowned him.
                      In 1992, bin Laden claimed responsibility for
                 attempting to bomb U.S. soldiers in Yemen, and again for
                 attacks in Somalia in 1993.
                      By 1994, the Saudis wanted bin Laden out of their
                 back yard. The Americans joined them in putting pressure
                 on the Sudanese to expel him.
                      He left Sudan for Afghanistan in the spring of 1996, by
                 which time he had been identified in a State Department
                 report as “a major financier of terrorism.”

                     “Osama bin Laden may be the most
                     dangerous non-state terrorist in the
                                   world.”
                     Sandy Berger, national security adviser, August 1998
 

                Back to Afghanistan, Angry
                 In a Declaration of Jihad dated Aug. 23, 1996, bin Laden
                 publicly challenged the United States for the first time.
                      He called for religious youths to kill the American
                 occupiers of the kingdom. “The walls of oppression and
                 humiliation,” said the fatwa, “cannot be demolished except
                 in a rain of bullets.”
                      In February 1998, he went further. After convening a
                 meeting with various terrorist groups, including Islamic
                 Jihad, he issued a fatwa calling for the deaths of all
                 Americans. He did not differentiate between military and
                 civilian, or between man, woman, or child.
                      On Aug. 7 1998, the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and
                 Kenya were bombed. A total of 226 people, including 12
                 Americans, were killed. U.S. investigators blamed bin
                 Laden for the attacks..
                      Most experts have noted that the embassy bombings
                 coincided with the date in 1990 when President Bush
                 deployed U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia.
                      The United States has since taken actions in the hope
                 of undermining the possibility of future attacks.
                      A 1998 indictment names an “umbrella” organization
                 — Al Qaeda, or The Base — led by bin Laden and said
                 to be “an international terrorist group” under whose aegis
                 are cells that have been blamed for just about every
                 modern act of Islamic terrorism against the United States.
                      Bin Laden has been implicated in the World Trade
                 Center bombing of February 1993; the fall 1993 firefight
                 in Mogadishu, Somalia, that left 18 U.S. troops dead; the
                 bomb that killed five U.S. servicemen in Riyadh, Saudi
                 Arabia; in 1996; and another bomb that killed 19 in their
                 barracks in Dhahran.
                      On Aug. 22, 1998, President Clinton signed an
                 executive order authorizing the Treasury Department to
                 “.block all financial transactions between U.S. companies
                 or individuals and … the bin Laden terrorist group.”
                      Since then, the United States has also launched a
                 cruise missile attack on a suspected chemical weapons
                 plant in Sudan and a suspected terrorist training ground in
                 Afghanistan in retaliation for the embassy massacres.
                      There have been sporadic and conflicting reports
                 about bin Laden’s whereabouts and condition. There has
                 been some speculation that bin Laden is sick, and may no
                 longer be hiding out in Afghanistan.