article_snippet: years before al Qaeda flew hijacked planes into buildings or bombed U.S. embassies in Africa and even before the FBI placed Osama bin Laden's on al Qaeda Most Wanted List.
article_snippet: Still, Osama bin Laden's was preparing, hiding out in a remote, mountainous area of Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.
article_snippet: Bin Laden, from Saudi Arabia, first went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to participate in the armed resistance to Soviet invaders, one of thousands of Arab fighters defending a Muslim nation.
article_snippet: As the anti-Soviet jihad wound down, Bin Laden began organizing al Qaeda, meaning "the base," around the border city of Peshawar, Pakistan.
article_snippet: By 1992, Pakistan forced Bin Laden and Bin Laden fighters to leave.
article_snippet: Bin Laden relocated to Khartoum, Sudan, welcomed by a new Islamist regime.
article_snippet: But after four years headquartered there, in 1996, under pressure from the United States, Sudan made Bin Laden go.
article_snippet: By then, the ideologically in sync Taliban had taken control of Afghanistan, and Bin Laden decided to move there.
article_snippet: In May 1996, Bin Laden settled in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.
article_snippet: Bin Laden mountain fortress in Tora Bora was a long drive up a dirt road Bin Laden had built.
article_snippet: As one photo shows, Atwan and Bin Laden took a two-hour walk around Tora Bora.
article_snippet: In December 2001, with U.S. troops retaliating for 9/11 closing in, Bin Laden fled Tora Bora, eventually making Bin Laden way to Pakistan, where U.S. SEALs ended a decade-long manhunt by killing Bin Laden in Bin Laden Abbottabad hideout, an hour north of Islamabad.
article_snippet: Even in Tora Bora, Atwan felt Bin Laden was vulnerable to intelligence agencies.
article_snippet: In 1996, Bin Laden knew but certainly did not disclose the lethal plots Bin Laden had set in motion -- the embassy bombings, the planes plot that would become 9/11.