I tend to agree with Scheuer one this one. The physical chain of custody from Bin Laden/Zawahiri can end abruptly and not be tracked.

The final courier simply drops off the tape at one of 1,000s of sympathetic yet unaffiliated jihadi websites — and they do the rest.

The only way to circumvent this compartmentalized structure is by obtaining the physical tape itself and pulling some forensics off of it — either tangible forensic intel (prints, hair, DNA, etc.) or digital forensics on the tape. Of course, this could be countered with instructions to destroy the tape as soon as it is copied.

On another matter, we have spent over a trillion dollars on the War on Terror, as Chris Brunner pointed out. But we’re only offering $50 million for the capture of bin laden himself — and the FBI arrests anybody who actually attempts to capture bin laden on their own, as happened to this Texan. But if we put out a $1 billion letter of marque on bin Laden and Zawahiri’s head, as Ron Paul has proposed, one of the various South Asian or Russian criminal syndicates would have rounded him up by now. But if there’s no bin laden, there’s no casus belli.