A trove of never-before-seen letters by Osama bin Laden portray the
terrorist leader as an irritated boss chiding his underlings for
mistakes yet sure that they could pull off elaborate attacks against the
United States.
U.S. Navy SEALs took the
correspondence after they killed bin Laden in a raid on his Pakistan
compound in May 2011. On Thursday, the Combating Terrorism Center at the
U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, released 17 letters
totaling 175 pages, with more documents to be made public later.
U.S. officials say that
the documents recovered in the compound -- about 6,000 worth -- were
written between September 2006 and April 2011 and were recovered from
five computers, dozens of hard drives and more than 100 storage devices.
The cache has been described as the single largest batch of senior
terrorist material ever obtained.
CNN reviewed the released papers, which can be read in full here.
Taken as a whole, the
letters suggest that al Qaeda senior leadership couldn't decide on how
to move forward. What tactics should they use? Do they need better
strategy? A segment of the records reveals that bin Laden was revamping
al Qaeda's media strategy, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring
protests, a movement toward freer societies in the Middle East and North
Africa. He wanted to launch a publicity campaign that would inspire
those who had "not yet revolted."
As a leader, bin Laden
reveals himself to be hot-tempered and annoyed that the terrorist
network he built had too many uncontrollable affiliates around the
globe. At one point, he demands that four senior figures in al Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula write their own detailed self-reviews and send
them to him.
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