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Since American authorities began scouring the globe looking for the location of Osama bin Laden following the September 11th attacks in 2001, there have been a number of unconfirmed sightings of Bin Laden in the United States.

Although some scholars believe that bin Laden took his new wife to visit Indiana and Los Angeles in 1978, all later suggestions of bin Laden entering the United States are typically dismissed by authorities "with a bit of understandable skepticism".^[1]

Examples

• Several dozen people had reported seeing bin Laden in Utah; driving a Volkswagen Beetle on the I-80, in the mall, at McDonald's, or in a Provo 7/11 purchasing a Big Gulp by January 2002.^[1][2]
  • Predominantly a Mormon state, urban legends rely on the tenuous allowance of plural marriage in Utah, and its arid temperatures to justify why the leader of al-Qaeda would choose it as his hiding place.^[3]
  • In response to the claims, Utah authorities told media that Bin Laden's face had been one of those pre-loaded into a facial recognition program for surveillance cameras at the E Center arena, expected to host the Olympic hockey tournament in 2002.^[1]

In 2003, a radio caller to George Noory's Coast to Coast reported seeing bin Laden in Florida

• In June 2007, the unemployed Thomas Potter of Olmsted Falls, Ohio wrote to the Department of Defence, as well as the media, requesting the $25 million reward for finding bin Laden, noting that whitepages.com had three listings for the shadowy leader; one that suggested he worked at FOX News, another suggesting he worked at Bethesda Interactive Solutions, and a third suggesting he lived in Hermitage, Tennessee.^[4]

Other

• In a 2009 sketch on Saturday Night Live, actors spoofed Sarah Palin informing Katie Couric that she had seen bin Laden driving a taxi.

References