US releases bin Laden papers

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Documents swept up in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound portray a leader cut off from his underlings, disappointed by their failures, beset by their complaints and regretting years of separation from much of his extensive family.

Focus your fighting on America, not one another, the sidelined al-Qaida chief exhorts his followers. In a videotaped will, he urges one of his wives, should she remarry after his death, to still choose to live beside him in paradise. He also directs her to send their son to the battlefield.

Despite some surprising quirks in the collection, the overall message of the 103 letters, videos and reports made public Wednesday hews to the terror group’s familiar mission: In the name of God, find a way to kill Americans. Kill Europeans. Kill Jews.

“Uproot the obnoxious tree by concentrating on its American trunk,” bin Laden writes in a letter urging al-Qaida affiliates in North Africa to not be distracted by fighting local security forces and to avoid Muslim infighting.

The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the documents, released as online images, were among a collection of books, U.S. think tank reports and other materials recovered in the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The information was declassified and made public after a review by government agencies, as required by a 2014 law. Hundreds more documents found at the compound will be reviewed for possible declassification and release, the office said Wednesday, four years after bin Laden’s death.

The documents, as translated by U.S. intelligence officials, mix the mundane language of business — personnel training, budget matters, financing for “workshops and collaborating groups” — with fervent religious appeals and updates on terrorism plots, all written in flowery language full of praise for God.

The documents include a fill-in-the-blanks job application for al-Qaida candidates that not only asks typical human-resources questions about education and hobbies but also, “Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?” It requests an emergency contact should the applicant become a martyr.