Officials: New Information Points to Bin Laden

US officials investigating the series of attacks Tuesday in New York and Washington are setting their sights on Osama bin Laden, the millionaire Saudi fugitive who has been blamed for past terrorist attacks against American targets.

"There are good indications that persons linked to Osama bin Laden may be responsible for these attacks," an intelligence official told CNN.

Intelligence sources said they based their assessment on new information they had gathered Tuesday afternoon, hours after airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They did not rule out the possibility that other groups may have been involved.

Terrorism experts, after reviewing the magnitude of the attacks, said few groups in the world would have the resources to carry out such a highly coordinated sequence of destruction. One of those organizations, they said, would be the Al Quaida group headed by bin Laden, who also is the suspected mastermind of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

U.S. officials said they had received no credible claim of responsibility in the aftermath of Tuesday's events, but said their "working assumption" laid responsibility for the attacks on "overseas terrorism."






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