Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid tells television news that "I heard today that he may have died in the earthquake that they had in Pakistan." December 11: A letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, dated December 11 and signed "Atiyah" (thought to be Atiyah Abd al-Rahman) is later intercepted and publicly reported in The Washington Post the following year. The letter indicates that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership were based in the Waziristan region of Pakistan at the time. In the letter, translated by the United States military's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "Atiyah" instructs Zarqawi to "send messengers from your end to Waziristan so that they meet with the brothers of the leadership ... I am now on a visit to them and I am writing you this letter as I am with them..." Al-Rahman also indicates that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are "weak" and "have many of their own problems." The letter has been deemed authentic by military and counterterrorism officials. 2006 January 9: Neoconservative commentator Michael Ledeen writes in a column in National Review that "according to Iranians I trust," bin Laden died of kidney failure in mid-December 2005 and was buried in Iran. Ledeen claimed that bin Laden has "spent most of his time since the destruction of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan" in Iran and wrote that "The Iranians who reported this note that this year's message in conjunction with the Muslim Hajj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time." May 24: Alexis Debat of ABC News reported on rumors that bin Laden was sighted in the Ghor Province of Afghanistan. The report, on ABC News's blog, was later removed due to doubts about the credibility of Debat's reporting. September 21: The French newspaper L'Est Républicain publishes an article by Laid Sammari which cited a September 21 French foreign intelligence document as reporting that Saudi officials received confirmation that bin Laden died August 23 of typhoid fever in Pakistan. U.S. intelligence officials stated that the reporting was unsubstantiated and that the U.S. had received no confirmation of that report. French President Jacques Chirac stated that the report was "in no way confirmed." Members of the bin Laden family also said they heard nothing to confirm the report. 2007 June: Speaking to al Jazeera, Taliban leader Mullah Bakht Mohammed stated that "Sheikh Osama bin Laden is alive and active. He's carrying out his