Five days after the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, CIA Director George Tenet gathered his senior spies in a conference room at the agencys Langley, Va., headquarters and passed out copies of a top-secret memo hed just drafted. "Were at war," the memo announced. The CIAs mission now was "to neutralize and destroy al Qaeda and its partners" around the world. "All the rules have changed."

The Company's new mission

Indeed, they have. In that same month George Bush signed a secret intelligence finding giving the agency the green light to assassinate bin Laden and, with the help of special ops commandos, to employ lethal force against anyone in his worldwide terror network. Its all part of the other war now being waged — the war not seen on television screens with Pentagon briefings and gun camera videos of targets destroyed in Afghanistan. It's the war being conducted in secret to take down the terror network that bin Laden has spread into more than 50 countries.

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) The CIA, surprised and humiliated by the sneak attack on Sept. 11, is now throwing everything it has at that network. The agencys Counter-Terrorism Center, which coordinates the worldwide war out of the ground floor of the Langley headquarters, has ballooned to 800 analysts, technicians and covert operatives. Nearby conference rooms and snack bars have been commandeered for makeshift workstations. Empty pizza boxes, the residue of 24-hour-a-day activity, litter hallways. A financial team is feeding bank transfer intelligence to Operation Green Quest, a Treasury Department program to block al Qaedas cash flow. Agency scientists are also fielding anti-terror gizmos like OASIS, a computer that scans thousands of foreign TV broadcasts and quickly plucks out terror suspects on the screen from their voiceprints.

Much of the espionage involves collaborating with overseas intelligence services to round up bin Laden supporters. Some 300 suspects in 42 countries have been arrested, many as a result of intelligence the CIA fed to foreign agencies. Leads from Langley, for example, helped German agents break up bin Laden cells there and French authorities thwart a terror attack on the U.S. embassy in Paris.

It can also be dirty work. Since the start of the air war, CIA-operated Predator drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, have been flying over Afghanistan to try to pick off bin Laden or Taliban leaders. Restrictions on recruiting unsavory informants have been loosened. CIA officers have met privately with old foes in the Syrian and Libyan intelligence services to see if they can provide clues to al Qaeda hideouts. Agency operatives have even been trying to penetrate the Russian mafia for leads on chemical or biological agents bin Laden may have been trying to buy from it.

Widening the mandate

Two weeks ago, Gen. Charles Holland, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, met with a dozen new U.S. ambassadors at Ft. Bragg, N.C. When you get to your posts, "dont be surprised if you see us coming," Holland warned. The command has secret contingency plans to sneak special operations forces into any trouble spot in the world, complete with infiltration routes, drop zones, intelligence contacts and assault points. About 20 Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and military counter-terror operatives have already been dispatched to the Philippines to advise its army in guerrilla warfare against the Abu Sayyef group, which has ties to bin Laden.

The CIAs war, however, will be a long one and its already met with setbacks. Bin Laden trained 11,000 men at his Afghan camps, most of who have fanned out to other countries. Cooperation is uneven among foreign intelligence services and the agency hasnt had much luck in the past in draining bin Ladens bank accounts. Many of the 300 detained overseas are innocents swept up in dragnets. CIA agents have been roaming southern and eastern Afghanistan with bags full cash, trying to entice Pashtun warlords to turn against the Taliban. But the agents have had limited success, according to intelligence sources. One reason: drug trafficking in the region has driven up bribe prices and many provincial chiefs whove grown rich on it arent impressed by agency offers.

But the CIA cant afford to be shy. Its secret war could spell the difference between success or failure for Bushs larger battle with terrorism. And after the Sept. 11 surprise, the agencys reputation is at stake as well.