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About a decade ago, Frontline and The New York Times completed the in-depth “Hunting bin Laden,” after the U.S. determined Osama bin Laden had orchestrated the 1998 bombings of two embassies, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and, of course, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
After all these years, the wealthy Saudi Arabian exile is still believed to be hiding in the mountains around Afghanistan, with a $25 million bounty on his head.
But that promise of fortune doesn’t seem to have been the motivating factor in driving Greeley construction worker Gary Brooks Faulkner to Afghanistan in a solo hunt for bin Laden, according to The Associated Press. Faulkner, in his early 50s, was detained in the mountains of Pakistan while carrying a sword, a pistol, and night-vision goggles.
Catching bin Laden is Faulkner’s obsession, says his brother, Scott Faulkner, who adds that Gary had been to Pakistan at least six times and who told reporters his brother is “not a sociopath. He’s a man on a mission, and his mission just happens to take him half way around the world” (via 9News).
As Westword points out, Faulkner’s “tale is another chapter in Colorado’s kooky connections to terror.”
Meanwhile, The Baltimore Sun wants more details about the “Christian literature” Faulkner was reportedly carrying.