The spooks of Pakistan, with their highly sophisticated equipment, who cost us far more than we can afford (one of whose pastimes is to tap my telephones ) should rejoice. They are not the worst of the lot. The American intelligence which spends some $30 billion year of their people's money were not able to protect their own front yard.

Having pondered deeply, the Americans have come to the conclusion that the prime suspect, the man responsible for the New York and Washington aircraft-bombs which exploded causing so many deaths, and massive damage to life and property (which any civilized man must find abhorrent) and the third hijacked crashed aircraft in Pennsylvania, is Osama bin Laden, also known as 'Al-Qaqa', The Prince, The Emir, Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Laden, Shaykh Usamah Bin-Laden, Abu-Abdullah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, and lastly, in rather James-Bondish fashion, The Director.

This man is the first amongst the ten most wanted fugitives on the FBI list. The FBI describes him thus: Born in 1957 (some say in 1956 or 1958) in Saudi Arabia (some say elsewhere), he stands 6 foot 6 inches high unstooped and 6 foot 4 inches stooped, he weighs some 160 pounds, is of thin build, has brown hair, brown eyes. He bears no scars or marks. His occupation is stated to be 'unknown'. It is said that he is the 'leader of a terrorist organization known as Al-Qaeda (The Base).

He walks with a cane. Reports say the Saudis have now stripped him of his nationality and frozen his funds. He is armed and exceedingly dangerous. The government of the United States offers a reward of up to $5 million for information leading directly to his apprehension or conviction.

The United States District Court of the Southern District of New York records that in 1998 the Grand Jury indicted Bin Laden on various charges, under indictment No.S(2)98 Cr.1023(LBS). Others indicted with him on similar charges are Mohammad Ataf, aka Abu-Hafs el Masry, Abu Hafs el Masry el Khabir, Taysir, Sheikh Taysir Abdullah; Wadih el Hage, aka Abdus Sabbur, Abd al Sabbur, Norman, Wa'da Norman; Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, aka Harun Fazhl, Fazhl Abdullah, Fazhl Khan; Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, aka Abu Moath, Noureldine, Marwan, Hydar; and Moahmed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, aka Khalid Salim Saleh Bin Rashed, Moath, Abdul Jabbar Ali Abdel Latif.

Osama may be reading this right now. The Taliban say he does not have a telephone line - which is true. He would be a dead duck were he to rely on the Afghan telephone network or for that matter on ours. But he is considered to be the most wired terrorist ever known, now running a holy war via satellite telephones and modems. The National Security Agency regularly listens to his unencrypted calls from his bat-cave in Afghanistan.

He uses a portable INMARSAT phone that transmits and receives calls over spacecraft owned by the International Maritime Satellite Organization, the same system as is used by our smugglers and heroin traders. Osama is aware that the United States can and does eavesdrop on his international communications, but he does not seem to care. To impress cleared visitors, NSA analysts occasionally play audio tapes of bin Laden talking to his mother over an Inmarsat connection.

US Intelligence operates what is probably the largest information processing environment in the world. Just one intelligence connection system alone can generate a million inputs per half hour. Filters throw away all but 6,500 inputs, only 1,000 of which meet forwarding criteria. Ten inputs are normally selected by analysts and only one report is produced. These are routine statistics for a number of US intelligence collection and analysis systems which collect technical intelligence.

Inside Osama's cave, in rooms hollowed into the rock face, computer screens glow, fax machines whirr. US Intelligence believes that he e-mailed instructions from his cave to his supporters on the timing of the 1995 car bombing in Riyadh that killed five Americans. They also believe that he controls some $300 million (they at one time paid him $10 million) and kills with the 'send' button of his e-mail.

Osama watches his diet. He lives on gritty bread, cheese and tea. One of the US spooks found him and his entourage of twelve sharing a meal of just four fried eggs. After picking him up and training him for their own purposes, the US still knows little about the man whose face has become the scariest icon in the past five days. Osama was born the seventeenth of the 52 or 53 children of Saudi construction magnate Muhammad Awad bin Laden.

His mother (variously reported as either Palestinian or conservative Saudi) is derided as the billionaire's tenth and least favoured wife. Osama is the only child of this union. By all accounts he was a quiet and unremarkable boy who learned the family business in his school holidays. He is said to have graduated from a college either in Riyhadh, or Jeddah, or maybe London, with a degree in business management, or perhaps engineering.

Most accounts have it that as a teenager bin Laden became fired with religious fervour whilst working on restoring the Islamic holy sites at Makkah and Madina. The Washington Post has it that he left school in 1973, caroused in bars and nightclubs in swinging Beirut, trading insults and punches over the attentions of pretty barmaids and sexy belly-dancers until the party ended with the Lebanese civil war in 1975.

Now, before our spooks disrupt my communications systems, I tell them that all this information has been culled from the Internet, available with one click to anyone with access.

Now we come home. Our president general, so to speak, now on the carpet, is capable of seeing us through this rather tricky patch. He must remember that all leadership demands a price and remember that the Americans still follow the solemn admonition of their first president, George Washington, delivered in his farewell address: "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world."

Our help has been sought and it must be given. By their own admission, American memory is short. Today's friends of necessity become tomorrow's enemies. What we want, what we badly need, is to be asked upfront. We can do better than Hosni Mubarak, who by nimble adept footwork had Egypt's $9 billion written off. Pervez Musharraf is now a statesman and not a commando. He must unequivocally endorse the belated words of Atal Behari Vajpayee:

"We must strike at the roots of the system that breeds terrorism. We must stamp out the infrastructure that imparts the perverse ideological poison by which the terrorist is fired up. We must hold governments wholly accountable for the terrorism that originates from their countries. In other words, to get at the terrorists the world community must get at their organizations, at those who condition, finance, train, equip and protect them.

The world must join hands to overwhelm terrorists militarily, to neutralize their poison.... every Indian has to be a part of this global war on terrorism..... what happens in Mumbai one day is bound to happen elsewhere tomorrow, that the poison that propels mercenaries and terrorists to kill and maim in Jammu and Kashmir will impel the same sort to blow up people elsewhere."

On Friday afternoon in Washington the Senate adopted a joint resolution. President George W Bush was "authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2011, or harboured such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

Unanimous rapid-fire approval was given to a down-payment of $40 billion dollars for this purpose, twice the amount the President had asked for.