From Reuters:

US and British intelligence officials believe the bombings in Egypt and London were organised by fugitive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

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Washington (FA Wire) - After hearing reports that the recent London and Egyptian bombings were orchestrated by a terrorist leader known as “Osama bin Laden,” the Bush administration today leapt into action, mobilizing intelligence and ordering investigations.

“We don’t know much about this ‘bin Laden’ guy, but we’ll get him,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. “It’s too early to judge how high he’ll be on our priorities list, but we’re definitely interested in finding out more.”

Across Washington, Bush administration officials fanned out to assure the public that this new threat was being taken seriously.

“First Saddam Hussein, then Zarqawi, now there’s Bin Laden,” said Vice President Dick Cheney on “Meet the Press.” “One leader goes down, another pops up. And from what I’ve heard so far, this Osama guy might not even be in Iraq, which adds to the challenge. But we’re up for it.”

Intelligence analysts were caught a bit off guard by the news, but they claim to be adjusting quickly. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff summed it up this way: “We’ve been working on several different angles ever since Saddam’s Republican Guard flew those planes into the World Trade Center. We knew that our retaliation against Iraq might cause some unrest in the Arab world, and the rise of this ‘Osama bin Laden’ appears to confirm this suspicion. He appears to be involved in some sort of movement that we’ll call, for lack of a better term, ‘Muslim fundamentalism’ or ‘Islamism,’ and his organization goes by the name of… ‘Al Kayda.’”

Little else is known about the leader or his network, apart from the obvious connections to Iraq and fragments of Saddam Hussein’s old regime. Still, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appearing via remote on “This Week,” expressed optimism on the propects of hunting down this new threat. “He’s got a good head start, but now that we’re aware of him, we’ll work with the British and he will be caught or killed, hopefully before he can strike within the United States. He can run, but he can’t hide.”