For four years prior to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the U.S., the CIA paid a team of about 15 recruited Afghan agents to regularly track Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, The Washington Post reports in its Sunday edition, citing what it called "well placed sources." The team had mixed results, the Post reported, ranging from excellent to total failure. Once every month or so, the team pinpointed bin Laden's presence in a specific building, compound or training camp, and that location was then confirmed by the Central Intelligence Agency through communications intelligence or satellite overhead photography.

On two occassions, the team reported firing on bin Laden's caravan, though the agency couldn't independently validate this.
The tracking team's existence was one of the mostly tightly held secrets in the CIA over the past several years and suggests that the U.S. search for bin Laden in Afghanistan was more concentrated and aggressive than previously disclosed, the Post reported. Bureau Report