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In Osama Bin Laden Library: Illuminati and Bob Woodward In Osama bin Laden Library: Illuminati and Bob Woodward
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — In his final years, Osama bin Laden spent his days sending missives to his subordinates, seeking to direct a terror network that appeared to have grown far beyond his control, and working his way through a pile of books that ranged from sober works of history and current affairs to wild conspiracy theories spun by infamous anti-Semites. WASHINGTON — To join Al Qaeda in Osama bin Laden’s day, prospective recruits had to take an arduous and risky journey to the network’s haven in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan, the heartland of global Islamist militancy.
The latest insight into Bin Laden’s life in hiding comes from dozens of documents that American officials say were taken during the raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 and were declassified on Wednesday. Then they had to fill in an application.
The material included nearly 80 documents – most of them letters between Bin Laden and his lieutenants – but the initial buzz generated by the release came largely from the list of books found in Bin Laden’s compound. That appeared to be by design: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence seized on Bin Laden’s reading list to promote the release, titling the web page listing all the now-public material “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf.” The three pages of questions show how Al Qaeda, in its vision of itself as a disciplined network of committed militants, blended the mundanely bureaucratic with the frighteningly absurd. Among the queries: “Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?” and “Who should we contact in case you become a martyr?”
Some of the books taken from his compound would be a familiar sight on the bookshelf of anyone interested in global affairs, such as “Obama’s Wars,” by Bob Woodward, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” by Paul Kennedy and “Imperial Hubris,” by Michael Scheuer, the former official who once ran the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bin Laden desk. The last line provided space for the address and phone number of next of kin.
Others reveal a more conspiratorial side of Bin Laden, who was believed to have read them in English. He apparently worked his way through conspiracy theory classics such as “Bloodlines of the Illuminati,” by Fritz Springmeier and “Secrets of the Federal Reserve” by Eustace Mullins, a Holocaust denier. The application, which was among nearly 80 documents and other materials, including books and press clippings, seized from Bin Laden’s compound during the raid by Navy SEAL members in May 2011, was declassified on Wednesday by the Obama administration.
Wednesday’s release comes after years of pressure on the Obama administration to declassify material seized from Bin Laden’s compound. Last year, Congress directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review the material and make public as many as possible. The material offers the deepest look yet into Bin Laden’s final years, much of which he appears to have spent sending missives to his subordinates, seeking to direct a terror network that appeared to have grown far beyond his control, and working his way through a pile of books that ranged from sober works of history and current affairs to wild conspiracy theories spun by anti-Semites.
The review, which began in May 2014, is expected to continue through the summer and into the fall, said Jeffrey S Anchukaitis, a spokesman for the intelligence office. But the White House asked that office and the C.I.A. to begin releasing material immediately because of “the increasing public demand to review those documents,” he said. He also appeared to have maintained a keen interest in what the United States government thought of Al Qaeda. A copy of “The 9/11 Commission Report” was found in the compound in Abbottabad, as were three reports on Al Qaeda by the Congressional Research Service. There was also an application for American citizenship (no word on whether it was filled out).
The timing of the release also gave the administration a chance to indirectly push back on a controversial article about Bin Laden’s death by Seymour M. Hersh’s in The London Review of Books. The article, which was published this month, said the Obama administration had lied about the raid, and claimed that it was staged in cooperation with Pakistan, which had been holding Bin Laden prisoner in his compound. Apart from reading materials, most of the documents are letters between Bin Laden and his lieutenants and writings by other loyalists and operatives. The documents do contain snippets of previously unknown information about Al Qaeda, such as the fact that its Taliban benefactors objected to the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, American officials said.
Administration officials have dismissed the article, contesting almost every new detail in it, including Mr. Hersh’s assertion that the material taken from Bin Laden’s compound was actually provided to American intelligence officials by their Pakistani counterparts in the years leading up the Al Qaeda chief’s death. But it was the list of books found in Bin Laden’s compound that garnered the most interest Wednesday. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which managed the release, seized on Bin Laden’s reading list to promote it, titling the web page listing all the now-public material “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf.”
Much of what came out of the compound remains classified. The latest release brings to 103 the total number of documents from the raid that are now publicly available, plus other tidbits, such as the reading list. Twenty-seven documents had previously been made public, including 10 that were submitted as evidence at a federal trial in New York earlier this year. Some of the books would be familiar to anyone interested in global affairs, such as “Obama’s Wars,” by Bob Woodward; “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” by Paul Kennedy; and “Imperial Hubris,” by Michael Scheuer, the former official who once ran the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bin Laden desk.
Most of the documents appear to be letters and notes between Bin Laden and his top deputies. There is talk of training new recruits, and how to select the most talented to carry out major attacks in the West. There are discussions of who should be promoted, and the perceived strengths and weaknesses of those seeking to move up Al Qaeda’s chain of command. Other titles hinted at a paranoid worldview fostered by conspiracy theory classics such as “Bloodlines of the Illuminati,” by Fritz Springmeier, and “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve,” by Eustace Mullins, a Holocaust denier.
There are also long discussions between Bin Laden and his chief lieutenants about the strategy and the general direction of the terror network. He also kept scanned copies of Arabic newspapers. His English-language media diet seems to have leaned toward international news — six copies of Foreign Policy magazine were found in the compound — and articles about Al Qaeda, such as one from The Los Angeles Times in 2005, “Is Al Qaeda Just Bush’s Boogeyman?”
But experts have cautioned against drawing broad conclusions about the state of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden’s role in the organization from the limited selection of documents, saying the sample size is simply too small relative to the cache of material that remains classified. Bin Laden was either fascinated or frustrated by computers, or both, with more than two dozen instructional manuals for programs such as Adobe Photoshop and hardware like Intel circuit boards.
And he was apparently engrossed by France: He had 19 stories, essays and books about the country.
Wednesday’s release came after years of pressure for the Obama administration to declassify material seized from the compound. Last year, Congress directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to look over the material.
The review, which began in May 2014, is expected to continue through the summer and into the fall, said Jeffrey S. Anchukaitis, a spokesman for the intelligence office. But the White House asked that office and the C.I.A. to begin releasing material immediately because of “the increasing public demand to review those documents,” he said.
The timing of the release also gave the administration a chance to push back indirectly on Seymour M. Hersh’s recent article about Bin Laden’s death in The London Review of Books. The article, which was published this month, said the Obama administration had lied about the raid, and claimed that it was staged in cooperation with Pakistan, which had been holding Bin Laden prisoner in his compound.
Administration officials have dismissed the article.
Much of what came out of the compound remains classified, and the latest release brings to 103 the total number of documents from the raid that are now publicly available.
Most of the documents appear to be notes between Bin Laden and his top deputies. There is talk of training recruits, and of how to select the most talented to carry out major attacks in the West. There are discussions of who to promote and how to deal with the group’s franchises in the Middle East and North Africa.
Experts have cautioned against drawing broad conclusions about the state of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden’s role in the organization from the limited selection of documents, saying the sample size is too small relative to the cache of material that remains classified.
But one conclusion appears certain: Bin Laden was deep into the minutiae of Al Qaeda’s daily operations. A spreadsheet of various expenses for April to December 2009 was found in the compound, for instance, and in a letter dated Aug. 7, 2010, Bin Laden advised a deputy not to give advances on monthly salaries to Qaeda operatives.
“They could spend the money and then come back and ask for a loan,” he wrote.
And there was the application. Whether it was ever used is a question that American officials did not answer. But in any case, the application’s intent represents a codification of Bin Laden’s vision of Al Qaeda as a network of skilled operatives who have been vetted and trained and are ready to be dispatched to inflict spectacular attacks.
What would happen after his own death is a question that appears to have weighed on Bin Laden. In a letter written to one of his wives that was released on Wednesday, Bin Laden said that if he were killed and she wanted to remarry, “I have no objection.”
“But you have to raise my children properly and to watch them, and be careful of bad company for them,” he wrote in the letter from Aug. 15, 2008.
And then he added one more caveat: If she remarried, on Judgment Day she would have to pick one husband with whom to spend eternity. He wrote, “I really want for you to be my wife in paradise.”