http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr021227_1_n.shtml27 December 2002
Osama bin who?
In September 2001, an American request for the Israelis to share their information about Osama bin Laden went unanswered. At first, the Americans thought the Israelis were for some reason hiding their information. It was, however, only after heads of the secret intelligence service (Mossad) and the military intelligence service (Aman) went to Washington in person that the American administration learned the extraordinary inside story about what was going on.
The reason why the American request went unanswered was that the Israelis did not have any substantial raw intelligence information about Bin Laden and his friends. And the reason for this is that Israel was not on Bin Laden's hit list. And since Bin Laden was not threatening Israel, the Israelis did not threaten him. He was never on the annual list of Islamist extremists issued by the espionage and security services.
This sleepy Israeli approach towards Bin Laden has of course been changed. True? Wrong. Until this week, and regardless of the Kenya attack on Israeli tourists in November, Bin Laden is still not Israel's top priority for intelligence coverage.
Israel's spymasters still think that even after Kenya, Bin Laden has bigger and less-protected targets than Israel to attack. The Israeli secret services' second reason is that, regardless of their worldwide reputation, they are overloaded with work and cannot