More Osama bin Laden Raid Materials Released

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By MATTHEW ROSENBERGMARCH 1, 2016

Photo

The compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.CreditWarrick Page for The New York Times

• WASHINGTON — American drones were decimating the upper ranks of Al Qaeda, his men were killing suspected spies, and Osama bin Laden wondered: Could an Iranian dentist have planted a tracking device in his wife’s tooth?
  
  “The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli,” he wrote, using the nom de guerre Abu Abdallah.
  
  The letter was among thousands of pages of documents and other materials seized by Navy SEALs during the raid on Bin Laden’scompound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011, and it was declassified on Tuesday along with 112 other pieces of writings and letters found in the Qaeda leader’s hide-out.
  
  The documents provide a glimpse of Bin Laden’s thinking during his final years and at the struggle to keep Al Qaeda’s main branch and its offshoots in line and focused as American drone strikes killed the group’s senior leaders and demoralized its foot soldiers.
  
  American officials have said that the intelligence seized by the SEALs during the raid included letters, spreadsheets, books and pornography. Yet only a fraction of the materials have been declassified and released, and experts have cautioned against drawing broad conclusions until there is more.
  
  But in what has been released so far, the fear of being tracked is a theme that resurfaces again and again. In one letter, Bin Laden warns that a suitcase used to deliver a ransom could contain a tracking device.
  
  In 2014, Congress directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review the material and make public as much as possible. But it has been a slow process — the review began in May 2014, and it took a full year for the first set of declassified materials to be released.
  
  The first release, in May 2015, included nearly 80 documents, books, news media clippings and other materials.
  
  Most of the documents were notes from Bin Laden and his top deputies, and they suggested that the Qaeda leader spent his final years seeking to direct a terrorist network that appeared to have grown far beyond his control. There was talk of training recruits, and of how to select the most talented to carry out major attacks in the West. There were discussions of whom to promote and how to deal with the group’s franchises in the Middle East and North Africa.
  
  There were letters to loved ones, including a note to one of his wivesin which Bin Laden said that if he were killed, she could remarry. But he included a caveat, “I really want for you to be my wife in paradise, and the woman, if she marries two men, is given a choice on Judgment Day to be with one of them.”
  
  The intelligence director’s office also made public a list of books found in the compound. There were sober works of history and current affairs, such as “Obama’s Wars,” by Bob Woodward, and wild conspiracy theories, like “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve,” by Eustace Mullins, a Holocaust denier.
  
  Then there was the application for new Qaeda recruits, which was perhaps the oddest find in the first set of declassified materials. The application blended the mundanely bureaucratic with the frighteningly absurd, asking questions like “Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?” and “Who should we contact in case you become a martyr?”
  
  Whether it was ever used is a question that American officials have not answered.
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/w...lassified.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

 

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Osama bin Laden almost sounds like a U.S. presidential candidate in this secret letter

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Ishaan Tharoor March 1 at 12:38 PM
a tranche of more than 100 documents released Tuesday by the office of the Director of National Intelligence from the trove of material gathered after the 2011 raid on bin Laden's secret hideaway in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

These include missives sent by the al-Qaeda leader to accomplices, responses received as well as drafts of speeches and other rants he may have penned during his many years in hiding.

[You can read them all here.]

"The files reinforce the sense that bin Laden was increasingly anxious about security amid an escalating campaign of CIA drone strikes as the decade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda leader wore on," writes my colleague Greg Miller. "He also appeared increasingly disconnected from how much his organization had been degraded, calling on deputies to mount operations and fill positions even as they pleaded that they lacked capable recruits."

But one document, titled "To the American People," is particularly intriguing.

"I direct my talk specifically to those who support real change, especially the youth," it begins, before declaiming "the tyranny of the control of capital by large companies" that has evidently harmed the American economy.

The letter is undated but appears to be written around 2009, with references to the recent election of "Barack Husayn" and the "six years" of war waged by President George W. Bush in Iraq.

It goes on to bemoan the bailout of big banks during the Great Recession and then links the forces in play to the agenda of American warmongers and "Jewish" interests.

Your financial system in its totality was about to collapse within 48 hours had not the administration reverted to using taxpayer's money to rescue the vultures by using the assets of the victims. As for us, our Iraq was invaded in response to pressure from capitalists with greed for black gold, and you continue to support the oppressive Israelis in their occupation of our Palestine in response to pressures on your administration by a Jewish lobby backed by enormous financial capabilities.

The last charge is hardly a surprise, coming as it does from bin Laden, and carries echoes of the long-standing rhetoric of anti-imperialism that infuses jihadist messaging.

[What do we know about Osama bin Laden’s death? Quite a lot, actually.]

But the letter goes on to express some more astonishing concerns and, at times, sounds as if it could have been written by any anti-establishment politician in the United States. It prefaces a critique of the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United v. FEC ruling with this lengthy tirade against the political and corporate elites that control the levers of power.

The course of the policies of the present administration in several areas clearly reveals that whoever enters the White House, even with good intentions to safeguard the peoples' interest, is no more than a train operator. His only task is to keep the train on the tracks that are laid down by the lobbyists in New York and Washington to serve their interests first, even if it is counter to your security and economy. Any president who tries to move the train from the lobbyist's tracks to a track for the American people's interests will confront very strong opposition and pressures from the lobbyists.

It calls on young Americans not to embrace Republicans or Democrats but a "great revolution for freedom" that would empower Obama to make change.

"[That change] does not only include improvement of your economic situation and ensure your security, but more importantly, helps [Obama] in making a rational decision to save humanity from the harmful [greenhouse] gases that threaten its destiny," the letter advises. It does not go into any further details about the threat of climate change.

Now, at this point, you would think the jihadist letter writer would just cut to the chase and declare that the solution is simply to convert to his particularly puritanical form of Islam and embrace its edicts as law. But you would be wrong.

The letter recommends Americans "relive the history of their ancestors and the conditions in their country more than two centuries ago."

Read Thomas Paine, it urges (not the Koran).

"The British Parliament sided with corporations, then against the interests of the citizens," the letter states. "You have noticed the Congress’s stand with corporations against the peoples’ interests when they refused to legislate against interference in the elections by corporations."

Then it goes on to extol the convictions and endeavor of the United States' revolutionary heroes, who apparently would not want their country's policies hijacked by corporate interests, such as those of the British East India Co., that bogeyman of the late 18th century.

"You also are in need of men with courage and initiative like those of your forefathers at that time when they refused to allow one company to harm the interests of the United States, a company that had a monopoly on tea and its prices," the letter says.

It then extends the lesson to more familiar terrain, condemning what it deems the cabal of policymakers and shadowy interests that somehow perpetuate Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.

And it ends on a predictable note: "The United States shall pay for its arrogance with the blood of Christians and their funds. Peace be upon those who follow the righteous track."

Osama bin Laden almost sounds like a U.S. presidential candidate in this secret letter

 

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Bin Laden left $29m inheritance for jihad

• 2 hours ago
  
• From the sectionAsia

Image copyrightReuters
Image captionBin Laden was killed in the raid in the Pakistani town of Abbotabad
What was on Bin Laden's bookshelf?

• Questions swirl around Bin Laden report

• Bin Laden 'frustrated at the end'

Osama Bin Laden left a personal fortune of around $29m (£21m) after his death in a raid in 2011, his will shows.

The will is among a trove of documents released to US media on Tuesday. It was seized in the US assault in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

He urged his family to "obey my will" and to spend his inheritance on "jihad, for the sake of Allah".

In another letter, he urged his father to take care of his wife and children in the event of his death.

That message made it clear that the risk of being killed was present in his mind.

"If I am to be killed, pray for me a lot and give continuous charities in my name, as I will be in great need for support to reach the permanent home," he wrote.

Although Bin Laden referred to the money as being in Sudan, it is not clear whether it was in the form of cash or assets, or whether any of it made its way to his heirs.

He lived in Sudan for five years in the 1990s as a guest of the Sudanese government.

In other letters, he gave his assessment of the progress of the West's "war on terror" and the US military campaign in Afghanistan.

"They thought that the war would be easy and that they would accomplish their objectives in a few days or a few weeks," he wrote.

"We need to be patient a bit longer. With patience, there is victory!"

Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in May 2011 in a raid on his compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

The group has since been led by al-Qaeda's former second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Bin Laden left $29m inheritance for jihad - BBC News

 

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Osama bin Laden Wanted Americans to Help Obama Save Humanity from Climate Change | VICE News


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