Despite all the millions offered by the U.S. for information on how to get our hands on these guys, most of the big fish (the ones who haven’t had a personal meeting with a Hellfire missle, anyway) are still out there:

Known as Rewards for Justice, the program dates to 1984 and was originally used to track down fugitive terrorism suspects of all persuasions, from the Balkans to the Palestinian territories. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the most-wanted list was expanded—and the rewards boosted exponentially—as part of a push to eliminate al-Qaeda’s leadership.

So far, however, Rewards for Justice has failed to put a dent in al-Qaeda’s central command. Offers of $25 million each for al-Qaeda founders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have attracted hundreds of anonymous calls but no reliable leads, officials familiar with the program say. For a time, the program was generating so little useful information that in Pakistan, where most al-Qaeda chiefs are believed to be hiding, it was largely abandoned.

“It’s certainly been ineffective,” said Robert L. Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan and former director of the agency’s counterterrorism center. “It hasn’t produced results, and it hasn’t particularly produced leads.”

The article lists several reasons for this:

The failures of Rewards for Justice can be traced to several factors: weak publicity campaigns in places where al-Qaeda’s leadership is based; skepticism that the United States would deliver the money and protect informants; and a mistaken assumption that anyone’s loyalty can be bought if the price is high enough.

I think you can add this little factor into that equation: Al Qaeda would not hesitate to kill you, your family, and anyone else that they even thought knew you if you turned in one of their top leaders.

Not only that, anyone in a position to inform probably wouldn’t have very many places they could successfully hide after getting all that money. They’d probably not exactly blend into the crowd in most places. The money would end up being a death sentence sooner or later.