Bin Laden’s private journal reveals ideas for attacks on U.S.: Officials

[Guest guest]

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/989590--bin-laden-s-private-journal-re\

veals-ideas-for-attacks-on-u-s-officials?bn=1

Bin Laden's private journal reveals ideas for attacks on U.S.: Officials

Ken Dilanian and

Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON—Osama bin Laden kept a personal journal in which he contemplated how

to kill as many Americans as possible, including possible terrorist attacks

against Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to U.S. officials.

The handwritten journal was discovered in a vast cache of digital and printed

material that was hauled away from bin Laden's hideout after U.S. Navy SEALs

killed him last week in Abbottabad, Pakistan. One official said Wednesday that

the trove provided " terrabytes " of new information about Al Qaeda.

The official described the private journal as full of planning ideas and

outlines of potential operations, " aspirational guidance " on how to kill the

maximum number of people, rather than specific proposals or plots that were

actually under way.

In one unnerving passage, bin Laden wondered how many Americans would have to

die in U.S. cities to force the U.S. government to withdraw from the Arab world.

He concluded it would require another mass murder on the scale of the attacks of

Sept. 11, 2001, to spur a reversal in U.S. policy, a U.S. official said.

The officials declined to provide details about potential plots in Los Angeles

and Chicago. Bin Laden discussed an operation in Washington, D.C., one official

said, " because of its iconic value. "

A CIA-led multi-agency task force continues to scrutinize data from five

computers, dozens of plug-in storage devices called flash drives, and other

devices that were taken from bin Laden's walled compound. The analysts have not

found evidence of an imminent threat of an attack by Al Qaeda or its affiliates

around the globe, officials said.

But the initial analysis has determined that bin Laden was in regular

communication with several deputies, including Al Qaeda's putative operations

chief, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, officials said.

The messages were sent primarily by couriers carrying computer flash drives, the

official said.

The intelligence thus has overturned the long-held conventional wisdom that bin

Laden was an inspirational figurehead who was so isolated that he cut off

communications and played no operational role in terrorist attacks or plots,

according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are

not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive intelligence information.

" These assumptions (are) going out the window, " this official said.

Discovery of the journal was not entirely unexpected. Bin Laden's son, ,

described his father in a 2009 memoir, Growing Up bin Laden, as regularly

recording his thoughts and plans.

The son sharply criticizes his father's terrorist operations in the book, but

this week he accused the Obama administration of murdering his father instead of

capturing him.

" We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems, " he

said in a statement released to several news organizations.

Every day this week, intelligence officials across the American government have

been briefed about new information developed from the intelligence haul, one

U.S. official said.

The messages to al-Rahman, a Libyan in his mid-thirties, have drawn special

interest.

Al-Rahman joined bin Laden in Afghanistan as a teenager in the 1980s and " since

then, he has gained considerable stature in Al Qaeda as an explosives expert and

Islamic scholar, " according to a U.S. State Department website that offers a $1

million reward for information leading to him.

In 2005, al-Rahman signed a letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the now-dead leader

of Al Qaeda in Iraq, that rebuked the group for indiscriminate violence against

Shiites, according to counterterrorism experts.

Al-Rahman met al-Zarqawi in the western Afghanistan city of Herat in the late

1990s, according to the State Department dossier.

U.S. officials believe al-Rahman took over the role as Al Qaeda's No. 3 figure

after Sheikh Said al-Masri was killed in a missile strike from a CIA drone in

Pakistan's tribal area in May 2010, said a former Pentagon official. Al-Rahman

is now believed to be in Pakistan.

Also Wednesday, members of the U.S. Congress and other officials got a first

chance to examine photos of bin Laden's corpse, which U.S. President Barack

Obama has decided not to release publicly. Bin Laden was shot in the head and

chest.

" By viewing these photos, I can help dispel conspiracy theorists who doubt that

bin Laden is in fact dead, " said Oklahoma Republican Senator Inhofe, who

was among those who travelled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to see the

pictures.