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We know what the CIA was doing last summer

November 9, 2001 | Page 2

IT'S A strange way to treat "Public Enemy No. 1." But a leading French newspaper is reporting that the CIA met with Osama bin Laden when the U.S.-ally-turned-enemy was hospitalized last summer in the Persian Gulf state of Dubai.

Le Figaro quoted unnamed sources saying that bin Laden was hospitalized at American Hospital in Dubai in July--and that he met with two CIA agents while he was there. The U.S. government was offering a multimillion-dollar reward for bin Laden at the time.

Officially, the hospital denies the report, and so does the CIA. But the conservative French paper's sources say that the CIA's chief for the region openly bragged about the meeting.

And it's widely known--though rarely mentioned in the U.S. mainstream media--that bin Laden had extensive contact with U.S. government operatives, dating back to the Afghan war against the former USSR's military occupation and continuing into the 1990s.

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