Intelligence Community Releases Final Abbottabad Documents

Office of Director of National Intelligence, Closing the Book on Bin Laden – Intelligence Community Releases Final Abbottabad Documents "Today marks the end of a two-and-a-half-year effort to declassify several hundred documents recovered in the raid on Usama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound in May 2011."

'Osama bin Laden Warned an Islamic State Would Fail'

Nancy Youssef, Daily Beast, Osama bin Laden Warned an Islamic State Would Fail, 1 Mar 2016 "Before he was killed, the Al Qaeda chief urged his followers to put off dreams of a caliphate and focus on more pressing concerns."

Osama bin Laden sea 'burial'

Osama bin Laden: US Navy emails reveal no sailors witnessed secret burial at sea - Telegraph: "The emails were released by the Pentagon after a freedom of information request by the Associated Press, but were heavily redacted."

Osama bin Laden was blind in one eye

Guardian, Osama bin Laden was blind in one eye, says al-Qaida leader, 27 Sep 2012 "Al-Qaida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has revealed that his predecessor, Osama bin Laden, was blind in one eye and confirmed that in his youth he had been a member of the Saudi Arabian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. "In a video posted on a jihadi website, the third in a series entitled Days with the Imam, Zawahiri narrates stories about Bin Laden, who was killed by US navy commandos in May 2011 at his compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad."

'Pakistan jails doctor who helped CIA find Bin Laden'

BBC News - Pakistan jails doctor who helped CIA find Bin Laden "A Pakistani doctor is sentenced to at least 30 years in jail for a false vaccination programme which helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden."

aQ Report

Seized data portray bin Laden as ‘delusional,’ book author says

www.washingtontimes.com

"Al Qaeda was so unpopular among Muslims that Osama bin Laden considered changing the terror network’s name and warned other extremist groups to keep their distance in public, according to computer files found at his hideout."

OBL Facebook status

MSNBC Technolog, Osama bin Laden's death tops 2011 Facebook status updates, 7 Dec 2011

aq 9-11 Video

AFP, Al-Qaeda releases 9/11 anniversary video, 13 Sep 2011 "Al-Qaeda has released a video marking the anniversary of 9/11 which includes a message from its slain leader Osama bin Laden to the American people, monitoring group SITE Intelligence said Tuesday."

Bin Laden was logged off, but not al-Qaida

The Associated Press: Bin Laden was logged off, but not al-Qaida, 15 May 2011: "Al-Qaida's technological evolution illustrates how much the group has changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and why it has flourished despite America's decade-long quest to crush it, using everything from drone strikes in Pakistan to secret prisons in Eastern Europe where bin Laden's lieutenants were interrogated"

'Senior Al-Qaeda member warns US of 'worse' attack'

AKI, Bin Laden: Senior Al-Qaeda member warns US of 'worse' attack, 11 May 2011

OBL media re-evaluated

Baker Atyani, alarabiya.net, Osama Bin Laden meets the media, 9 May 2011 "The United States may not find much in Bin Laden’s house except some media and cultural content. The US may have possibly found very little about Al Qaeda, its network ties, strategies and planning.

"As such, it is important to re-consider the US announcement that it found a treasure throve of information about Al Qaeda."

More reaction re OBL

AP, Internet chatter up on bin Laden revenge attacks, 7 May 2011 "Pipe bombs, a targeted car crash, a lone gunman: Western intelligence officials said Friday they are seeing increased Internet and phone chatter about cheap, small-scale terror attacks to avenge the death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden."

OBL - net reaction and videos

Aaron Y. Zelin, Foreign Policy, The bin Laden aftermath: The Internet jihadis react, 2 May 2011 "Following President Barack Obama's announcement yesterday of the operation that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the latter's online grassroots supporters in forums and blogs began quickly to respond. These pronouncements provide key insights into how these activists view Bin Laden as well as their continued commitment to the movement, showing a range of emotions but also the durability of the ideas that bin Laden worked so hard to propagate through propaganda and massive anti-civilian violence."

Also see Aaron Zelin's jihadology.net for some of this reaction.

This in turn links to J.M. Berger, intelwire.com, New Osama bin Laden Videos: More Questions Than Answers [Berger is the author of 'Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam' which is due out soon.

Also see Wired, Danger Room, Watch: Osama’s Blooper Reel, Courtesy of the Navy SEALs, 7 May 2011











[note: no audio!]

Osama bin Laden's data

Collin Greenland, The Gleaner, Examining bin Laden's computer, 8 May 2011 "The information secured from terrorists' computers, therefore, has proven historically to be as important as actually killing them. Clearly, although the intelligence fraternity will be salivating at the "impressive" amount of information that CIA Director Leon Panetta said is being extracted by hundreds of analysts in Pakistan, billions worldwide are now also asking the same question: Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive? But how will they examine bin Laden's computer?"[Collin Greenland is a forensic accountant; the article usefully links to: US Department of Justice, 'Electronic Crime Scene Investigation: A Guide for First Responders' [pdf]]

Mathew J. Schwartz, informationweek.com, Cracking Bin Laden's Hard Drives, 5 May 2011 "Here's how the process works, said Rob Lee, a director at information security company Mandiant and a fellow at The SANS Institute, in a telephone interview: A military team will secure a location but not touch the computers. Next, computer experts--typically, contractors--traveling with the team come in and do a "clean takedown" of any machines. Little if any "deep dive" data analysis will be performed in the field, except perhaps some quick analysis in search of "low-hanging fruit," for example to note on a captured cell phone any phone numbers that the target recently called, or any recently sent emails. But the true payoff comes when intelligence analysts compare the captured data with "the hundreds of terabytes of data that they've already gathered over many years," for example to see how names, email addresses, and phone numbers match up."

John Hudswon, theatlanticwire.com, Is the U.S. Using Info from Bin Laden's Hard Drive for Drone Attacks?, 6 May 2011 "Days after U.S. Navy SEALs took hard drives, memory sticks and personal computers from Osama bin Laden's hideout, both Pakistan and the U.S. have launched major offensives against suspected Islamic militants. On Friday, a U.S. drone strike reportedly killed 12 militants in Pakistan and another U.S. drone strike in Yemen, the first since 2002, killed two suspected Al Qaeda operatives. And, as reported minutes ago, Pakistani forces have rounded up 40 people in Abbottabad suspected of having connections to bin Laden. Is the massive data trove recovered from bin Laden's compound already paying off?"

refers to this article:

Spencer Ackerman, Wired, First Drone Strikes Since bin Laden Raid Hit Pakistan, Yemen "CIA officials have yet to respond to inquiries from Danger Room about the connection between the drone strikes and the bin Laden compound intelligence. Chances are they won’t confirm anything. But it’s hard to resist making an educated guess. After al-Qaida’s Yemen branch tried to sneak bombs into the U.S. packed into printers, the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command paired up to create “kill/capture” teams, equipped with drones. And they’re precisely the ones who killed bin Laden and stole his documents."

OBL

onislam.net, Al-Qaeda Confirms Bin Laden's Death, 6 May 2011 , "Five days after the US announced the killing of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda confirmed on Friday, May 6, the killing of its leader, vowing revenge on the United States and its allies."

'Bin Laden’s Online Fan Club Fumes at Death Reports'

Adam Rawnsley and Noah Shachtman, Bin Laden’s Online Fan Club Fumes at Death Reports, 2 May 2011 "“As a cover-up to its catalog of failures, the enemy always tries to distract the attention of not only the supporters of the Jihad and the Mujahedeen,” cries Abu Ali Assadiq, one moderator of the Somalia-oriented jihadi forum Al-Qimmah."

arirang.co.kr, Al-Qaeda Internet Message Board Acknowledges Bin Laden's Death, 3 May 2011 "An Internet message board run by the Al-Qaeda leadership has acknowledged Osama bin Laden's death.

"According to the monitoring group SITE on Monday, Asad al-Jihad 2, a prominent member of the online jihadist community, called bin Laden a knight who sacrificed his soul to fight the United States and its allies."

Fisk on OBL

ABC Melbourne, Death of Osama Bin Laden 'pretty irrelevant': Robert Fisk, 2 May 2011 "Veteran journalist Robert Fisk, who interviewed Osama Bin Laden on three occasions, says news of Bin Laden's death is much less important than the popular uprisings happening in the Arab world."

"Bin Laden’s death unlikely to inspire new generation of jihadists" opinion

James M Dorsey, alarabiya.net, Bin Laden’s death unlikely to inspire new generation of jihadists, 2 May 2011 opinion piece

"With Al Qaeda marginalized by the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, the risk of Mr. Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted fugitive, becoming a martyr capable of inspiring jihadists across the globe in death as much as he did while alive has been substantially diminished."

CNN report on OBL

Typo on Fox

Metro, 'Obama bin Laden dead': Fox News typo causes Twitter storm, 2 May 2011 "Every news provider in the world is buzzing today, broadcasting stories on the death of Osama bin Laden. However, an oversight at Fox News' Sacramento affiliate Fox40 News saw the US TV channel use titles onscreen reporting that 'Obama Bin Laden' had died.