And indeed, by late afternoon Tuesday, the Bush administration confirmed that bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization were prime suspects.

He is widely regarded as the world's most dangerous man. He is thought to have been behind the twin bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that claimed the lives of 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Those numbers pale alongside the anticipated toll from Tuesday's attacks on symbols of American commercial and military might.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said FBI and intelligence officials told him the attacks were ''well-planned over a number of years, planned by real pros and experts. ... Their belief is, at least initially, that this looks like Osama bin Laden's signature.''

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., asked whether bin Laden's group is the likely perpetrator, said, ''I don't know if there's any other organization that had the capability to carry out such a coordinated series of attacks.''

Bin Laden's obsessive anti-Americanism has never been in doubt. ''I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the Americans,'' bin Laden was once quoted as saying.

He has declared all U.S. citizens to be legitimate targets of attack. CIA Director George Tenet has said bin Laden has demonstrated a capability to plan ''multiple attacks with little or no warning.''

His road to international pariah status has been helped along by his strong organizational skills and a warchest inherited from the family construction company.

Born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, bin Laden drew inspiration from Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. He had dreams of similar revolts in other Muslim countries.

Less than a year later, the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan provided another turning point. He despised the notion of people he considered to be infidels controlling a Muslim country and joined forces with the Afghan resistance.

Ironically, this commitment put him on the same side as the United States, which shared bin Laden's contempt for the Soviets and spent millions trying to liberate Afghanistan from them.

The Afghanistan experience enabled bin Laden and the many followers he recruited to hone the skills they needed for future struggles once the Soviets were evicted in early 1989.

His disdain for the monarchy in his Saudi homeland turned into outright opposition in 1990 when the kingdom invited hundreds of thousands of American and other foreign troops into the country after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

Saudi Arabia was betraying the faith by accepting help from western infidels, bin Laden believed, and he set about to drive the United States from the Middle East.

He lived a nomadic existence for several years, having been deported by a number of Islamic countries before finding a haven in Afghanistan. President Bush said Tuesday the United States ''will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.''

Operating from damp caves infested with scorpions and rats, he plotted against the world's only superpower. Aside from the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, he also is believed by U.S. officials to be responsible for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and last year's bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

He has proved to be an elusive target. President Clinton was so eager to liquidate bin Laden that he ordered more than 70 sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at his hideaway in Afghanistan in 1998. All fell wide of the mark. A $5 million FBI bounty on his head has yet to produce results. And despite two rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions, the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan refuse to turn him in.