A matchbook carrying a "wanted" announcement is credited with playing a decisive role in the 1995 capture of Ramzi Yousef in Pakistan. Thousands of such matchbooks circulated in Pakistan and Afghanistan to advertise a $2 million bounty for Mr. Yousef, considered the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City.

What will it take to catch Osama bin Laden?

The United States has offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his whereabouts or capture. And special operations and CIA personnel are scouring southern Afghanistan where intelligence officials think Mr. bin Laden is hiding.

Failure is not an option: President Bush has charged the military and intelligence community with finding Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive."

If successful, it would be one of the few intelligence victories for the United States in recent years. Problems dating back 25 years have hamstrung the Central Intelligence Agency's capabilities, say some intelligence and counterterrorism experts.

Hundreds of covert officers were laid off in the late 1970s after congressional investigations of agency abuses, including assassination plots against foreign leaders and spying on Americans. More agency jobs were lost in the mid-1990s after the end of the Cold War.

The agency increasingly relied more on satellites and electronic communications to collect intelligence and less on spies and informants.

Frederick Hitz, a former CIA inspector general, said it would take 10 years or more to build up a corps of skilled covert officers and analysts. Others agree.

"There's nothing you can do in the short term. There's nothing fixable overnight. This is a product of years of idiocy," said Larry Johnson, former deputy director of the State Department Office of Counter Terrorism.

Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., a former CIA operations officer, said the country is squeamish about covert operations.

"We still have that very significant area of human source intelligence that we essentially ignore because it gets messy," Mr. Simmons said. "It involves humans. It could involve an arrest. Or in the worst situation, it could involve a spy being captured and tortured and maybe killed. It's ugly."

Whether the goal is to find Mr. bin Laden or to prevent the next act of terrorism, human intelligence plays a crucial role in U.S. national security.

"It's absolutely critical," Mr. Simmons said.

Spies – or covert agents – are needed to confirm identities of people or targets located by technical intelligence, said Dr. Michael Donovan, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information. Human intelligence is also needed to understand changing political conditions in Afghanistan and throughout Central Asia, which is a key to forming a post-Taliban government, he said.

At this stage in the Bush administration's war on terrorism, assessments from a variety of military experts and former intelligence officials aren't good.

"The single most significant deficiency has been a lack of high quality intelligence," Richard Perle, a former assistant defense secretary, told an intelligence gathering recently.

The CIA has begun to improve its intelligence gathering. The Counter-Terrorism Center at Langley, Va., which includes officials from the CIA, FBI, Federal Aviation Administration, and other agencies, graduated five times as many students as in 1996. The agency is aggressively recruiting people fluent in Arabic.

"Human intelligence is the core of what we do, and we absolutely need to have more of it," said CIA spokesman Bill Harlow in a recent interview with CNN.

More than two dozen terrorists have been brought to justice since the summer of 1998, more than half of them associates of the bin Laden organization, CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year. The arrests "shattered terrorist cells and networks, thwarted terrorist plans, and in some cases even prevented attacks from occurring."

High-tech emphasis

But the agency is still paying for past mistakes, Mr. Simmons said. He resigned in anger from the CIA after 800 agents – a third of the covert operations service – were dismissed in the late 1970s as part of the CIA's downsizing after the congressional investigations.

At the same time, the agency was pouring billions of dollars into technical intelligence, such as satellite imagery, electronic listening devices, reconnaissance aircraft. That reflected the old mission of the intelligence community – to keep an eye on the former Soviet Union.

"The high sophistication of the intelligence community was a reflection of the target it was meant to address. Satellites have far more utility if you're trying to find Russian missiles than if you're trying to find one guy in a cave in Afghanistan," said Dr. Donovan.

Spy satellites and other high-tech tools cannot see intentions, however, experts said. For that, you need humans.

"Are these devices good at tracking Afghan and Taliban forces in caves? I rather think not," said Mr. Hitz, who served in the CIA for 20 years and was its inspector general from 1990 to 1998.

"Aerial imaging systems will tell you what something looks like. Electronic intercepts will tell you what it talks like. But the human sources will tell you what it's thinking and what it intends to do," Mr. Simmons said. "We need all three to be successful."

Mr. Simmons and others said additional downsizing by the CIA after the Cold War aggravated intelligence problems at a time when new threats proliferated. Terrorism, the spread of nuclear weapons, ethnic violence, and nationalism emerged as new dangers, he said.

The rules have changed

The rules of the spy game also have changed.

During the Cold War, clandestine agents operated out of official installations such as embassies or military bases. "Increasingly we're going to need people in the markets and the countryside where you're not going to find people with any official connection at all," said Mr. Hitz, who lectures in international affairs at Princeton University.

"It's the toughest job in the business. You're an independent actor with no support from any official installation. You're on your own," Mr. Hitz said.

It is a rare individual who is willing to try to infiltrate terrorist groups, Mr. Simmons said

Mr. Simmons added an amendment to recent anti-terrorist legislation to allow the CIA to reimburse agents for the cost of liability insurance.

"How can you get clandestine operatives to take a risk when they might get shot, they might get killed or they might get sued and lose everything they have? It was ludicrous."

What can the United States do right now to get better intelligence in the current war on terrorism?

"If you cannot get someone of your own in place, then you look to see if any of your friends have access," said retired Adm. Bob Inman, a former CIA deputy director.

In recent years, Pakistan has had an ongoing relationship with the Taliban, which it helped bring to power.

"People are looking to Pakistan because they might have assets in place. But what about their credibility? Where do their hearts lie?" Dr. Donovan asked.

In recent weeks, Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf removed generals with pro-Taliban leanings. That might improve the flow of intelligence between the two countries, said Mr. Inman, who lives in Austin.