What Was on Bin Laden's Hard Drive?

May 1st 2011 Abad Pakistan this compound is large but it's nothing fancy inside you'll find dozens of chickens some vegetable patches a cow and the World's Most Wanted Man only a handful of people know that Osama Bin Laden and 16 members of his family have been living here for the past 5 years they've taken great care to be as self-sufficient and under the radar as possible they're a tight-nit family and every night they have intense debates about the future of al-Qaeda especially lately like always Bin Laden goes to bed with one of his four wives

tonight it's the youngest Amal they're fast asleep cuddling their 3-year-old son when they're startled around 1:00 a.m. is that a storm Amal reaches to switch on a lamp but Bin Laden stops her he knows this sound it's not a storm it's helicopters Bin Laden panics the Americans are here they found him he's forgotten to load his AK this won't end well for him and another realization sets in we are going to find his hard drives 3 terab of al-qaeda's Secrets nothing could be worse he'd rather be captured and killed than to have this data exposed

bur before we begin for more background we would I'd like to recommend these fantastic short docs by our colleague and friend Neo on how Bin Laden was found also this video is largely based on the book the bin lot in papers by Nelly loud links are in the description now let's dive into the incredible story behind these hard drives good evening tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden the leader of al-Qaeda when the US Navy Seals raid a

babad to capture Bin Laden they were supposed to stay for only 30 minutes or less most successful missions take no longer and any delay would amplify the danger but when they spot quote a ton of computers in the compound the potential intelligence value is too tempting they deviate from the plan to return ASAP they gather up the electronics and deliver them to the CIA sifting through the files is a gargantuan task every arabic speaking linguist in the intelligence Community is on the job there's lots of normal stuff you might find on just about anyone's computer

Home Videos news clippings memes excessive amounts of pornography then there is the expected terrorist content Al-Qaeda propaganda and so on but that's not the interesting part on these hard drives us intelligence discovers a treasure Trope of letters the bulk of aa's communications were typed or handwritten then transmitted by corers on a SIM card for security reasons Bin Laden did not have internet access the whole time he was in hiding the letters were exchanged through what Al-Qaeda called a closed Circle a corer move between two intermediaries one on Bin Laden side and one on the side

of his trusted associate in North haeran a mountain this part of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan security measures were so stringent that The Courier did not know about the letters he was transmitting and Bin Laden never met him or knew who he actually was using couriers was cumbersome and dangerous but it worked for 10 years Bin Laden successfully remained hidden and the world was in the dark when it came to al- Qaeda until of course we rely heavily on high-powered computers to produce these videos but sometimes we might just want to work in a cafe or abroad

or on the beach even we can't take our giant desktops with us but there is another much cleaner solution anyes is a lightning fast secure and reliable access software for seamless remote work and file sharing it's free for personal use and supports remote video editing 3D printing CMS monitoring and much more it's easy to use for even the least techsavvy but powerful enough for advanced use like remote server maintenance the clean interface makes n a breeze for anyone to use it's available for all platforms from your laptop to your your phone all the way to

your grandmother's Windows XP machine if you're looking to collaborate remotely and need something fast and flexible check it out at n.com Fern we really do use any desk regularly and can highly recommend it upon discovery of the hard drives the CIA got straight to work extracting the immediate intelligence gains what they found they acted upon quickly for example the files helped them locate alida's chief operations officer in Pakistan's tribal regions they killed him by a drone strike within 4 months of the abadabad raid al-qaeda's top legal scholar was found and killed shortly after but after

these quick results many of al-qaeda's Secrets remain buried on these hard drives coded in the countless letters it would take years to grasp the content of all these communications and help came from outside the CIA and what I wanted to do was actually to Chronicle araa history post 911 and I wanted to do it through the letters not through secondary sources but through the letters this is Dr Nelly loud she studies the evolving ideology of Al Qaeda and Isis and she led a team that analyzed and contextualized the contents of Bin Laden's papers the declassification

process began in 2012 and by 2017 the Declassified files were massive at one point I came to realize this is where I was going to find al-qaeda's internal Communications and these were about 97,000 files I was fortunate that I was able to have have the support of two research assistants who were Native Arabic speakers like me loud and her assistants looked at all nearly 100,000 documents and what they uncovered is astonishing the letters reveal Bin Laden's character and al-qaeda's inner workings they lay bare Bin Laden's future plans and deepest fears they help map out the

global Jihadi landscape and they offer a definitive account of al-qaeda's post 911 history which up until then was deeply misunderstood Tabora which means black dust in PTO is a remote and Barren part of Eastern Afghanistan Bin Laden loves this region and knows it well it held a special place in Bin Laden's heart since the 1980s when he made a pilgrimage from Saudi Arabia to assist the Afghan mujahadin in the Holy cause of fighting the Soviets he helped fund the construction of cave complexes in the region and recruited fighters who contributed to the broader resistance movement

the Soviets eventually withdrew and Bin Laden believed his contributions to be decisive the Victorious Afghan Jihad inspired the formation of al-Qaeda which means the base the base of an islamist Legion that could wage Jihad anywhere at that time Bin Laden and the Americans were on the same side both in torab Bora supporting the Afghan mujahadin and resisting a Soviet invasion now 14 years later Bin Laden is cowering from them fleeing into the same mountains that he once used as a stronghold but the CIA are on his tracks on December 3rd 2001 the situation turns Grim

for Al-Qaeda the Americans start bombing relentlessly Al-Qaeda members are hiding in caves at 9,000 ft shivering in 10° below freezing they have no access to drinking water because it's frozen the bombs keep riging destruction Against All Odds Bin Laden escapes the US troops but he's not feeling celebratory he knows that at any moment he can be killed so he hastily draws up his will and in his will Bin Laden writes to his children forgive me because I've given you only a little of my time since I answered the Jihad call I've chosen a road fraught

with dangers and for this sake suffered from hardships embitterment betrayal and treachery I advise you not to work with Al-Qaeda it's a low moment for bin Laden and it's not just because death is around the corner it's also because he made a horrible mistake and now he knows it what the letters reveal is that alqaeda had not anticipated that the United States would launch a war in response to 9/11 at most they thought that the United States would respond with a limited air strikes Al-Qaeda was completely unprepared they didn't even have a plan a Bin

Laden made a huge miscalculation he believed the United States was fundamentally weak a paper tiger with no real bite not all jihadis suffer from this delusion in a council shortly before 91 high level jihadis and Muslim religious authorities warned Bin Laden that the Americans would attack the whole Middle East if if he launched an attack on us soil but he waved off their concerns confidently he was certain that the United States didn't have the resources for a Counterattack bin Len's stated purpose of 9/11 was to serve as a decisive blow to force the United States

to withdraw its military forces from Muslim majority countries well quite the opposite happened now Bin Laden had no choice but to acknowledge the true power of His sworn enemy several k members are already dead captured or displaced into unfriendly countries the Taliban who has been aiding Al-Qaeda has fallen rapidly but it would take Bin Laden years to publicly admit his mistake for their part the United States also misunderstood the power of their enemy but in their case the opposite was true they believed Al-Qaeda was far more powerful than it actually was up until Bin Laden's

death Al-Qaeda was widely perceived to be the major player in the global Jihadi landscape 9/11 shocked the world and it was assumed that only a very powerful Network could harm the world's greatest superpower in such a devastating manner most people believed Al-Qaeda was still pulling the strings when it came to other islamist terrorism the Madrid and London bombings of 2004 and 2005 were falsely reported to have been orchestrated by the group and for a while Bin Laden fed that narrative publicly cheering on jihadis and allowing people to believe that he was calling the shots Al-Qaeda

continued to release public statements which allowed them to project strength that they did not have they fed the illusion that the Jihadi landscape was a united front but the papers show that the post 911 reality looked quite different so when Benin Laden disappeared from the scene we learned that he stopped communicating with his associates for about 3 years now he was watching the news he was releasing public statements but he had no knowledge about what was happening in the world of alqaeda itself because he was he was hiding so between 2004 all the way to

2011 all the letters make it absolutely clear that alqaeda did not have the resources and did not have the Personnel to mount International terrorism quote unquote successful jihadis capable of international terrorism or in almost all cases operating independently of al-Qaeda from the outside the movement appeared to be United under Al-Qaeda but in reality the network was riddled with internal divisions Al-Qaeda was at constant odds with affiliate groups because of differing strategies power struggles and serious trust issues later letters show that much of al-qaeda's post 911 Focus was on managing these tensions in highly bureaucratic Al-Qaeda

memos you can tell that Bin Laden's educational background is in Business Administration and not religious scripture he's a Hands-On boss with a tendency to micromanage running Al-Qaeda like a failing company he's preoccupied with the competition with rebranding with PR scandals and with potential mergers he's anxiously trying and failing to control the affiliate groups he's afraid different strategies are tarnishing the al-Qaeda brand these groups ended up focusing their attention locally and in the process they mounted many indiscriminate attacks that saw many Muslim casualties and this upset bin Ladon deeply uh many if not probably all these

attacks were not authorized by Bin Laden or the top leadership of alqaeda we find Bin Laden and his associates remarkably calling for Less terrorism rather than more terrorism out of these groups but this isn't to kind of paint them as being um you know peaceful makers they wanted the attacks of all these groups um to be targeting the United States the United States's counterterrorism efforts didn't reflect any of this complexity the Americans believed that Al-Qaeda was growing stronger by the day they were fixated on Al-Qaeda as the main threat pouring a huge amount of resources

into finding Ben Laden and just after the 9/11 attacks the Bush Administration passed the authorization for the use of military force this legislation allowed military force to be used against anyone considered to be associated with the attacks without requiring explicit approval from Congress if a jihadist could reasonably be linked with Al-Qaeda the military activities in the region could be pursued more swiftly meanwhile other more threatening Jihadi groups were growing in strength outside the purview of The American's enormous military resources as a result in 2014 Al-Qaeda was overtaken by a rival jihadist group a group that

was formerly in offshoot they had broken away largely due to strategic disagreements bin L tried and failed to keep that group under control but after a point they simply stopped responding to his letters that group is now known as Isis the letter reveal another fascinating delusion of Bin Laden which helps explain why he was ultimately captured for nearly a decade Bin Laden has been on the run from the US his entire life and the lives of his family members are focused on evading capture it pains Bin Laden that his family is stuck in hiding the

papers show that he's a caring family man who's intensely worried about the safety and well-being of his loved ones he might be a mass murderer but he reads his grandkid stories every night it's a tough life in isolation but his careful security measures have kept him safe at one point in 2010 bin Lan receives a letter that one of his corers might have been captured this would compromise everything but instead of really starting to pack his bag he chose to stay where he did why Bin Laden had a soft spot for his family at that

time his wife in who was detained in Iran as well as his son were released and they wanted to join him so Bin Laden's role as a kindly patriarch may have been the reason for his ultimate downfall he was too wrapped up in his family matters to give the corer threat his full [Music] attention but there was another reason something completely unexpected a world historical event not he nor The World At Large saw it coming suddenly Bin Laden's obsession with security took a back SE role because his attention shifted in December 2010 a wave of

Uprising Thunders throughout the Arab world people are fed up with corruption poverty and authoritarianism the Arab Spring sends shock wavs through the Middle East and the rest of the world the initially peaceful protests turn deadly governments are overthrown Civil Wars erupt at first Bin Laden is Overjoyed the people are demanding the removal of corrupt dictators which he and other jihadists have been advocating for years then Laden sees a power vacuum and he plans to fill it he's long wanted to instigate regime changes in the Arab world after all that was the whole point of September

11 the United States was backing authoritarian regimes in Muslim majority countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia the attack was meant to force them to retreat from the region then their puppet regimes in the Arab world would fall and Al-Qaeda could swoop in and install Taliban style Utopias and now the people are overthrowing these regimes themselves what could be better Bin Laden and his family are excitedly preparing their response we know this from a handwritten family Journal found during the ababat raid the journal recorded the conversations of Bin L's family leading up to the night before

his death every day they're having intense debates about how Al-Qaeda should navigate this new reality there's just one problem Al-Qaeda isn't exactly at the Forefront of the protesters demands it seems that many people want democracy and not a caliphate and the situation keeps changing rapidly so strategizing is tricky in his last few days Benin Lan relies a lot upon his two Millennial daughters to formulate a stance Mariam and Sumaya are 19 and 21 at the time the journal reveals them to be sharp passionate and willing to challenge their father they ask him the hard questions

like is it possible that some among the new generation will believe that political change can occur without Jihad after all the West intervened in support of overthrowing the Libyan dictator seems generally in favor of the uprisings bin Laden is stumped at points he is almost hopeless in his confusion one day saying we cannot do anything except intensify our prayers but his daughters push him to make a statement the political moment is too important to waste so the role of his daughters was remarkable and we find in the letters by various family members that maram and

and suya to quote one letter worked very closely with their father and their writings were broadcast on TV meaning that it was their their work their writings that Bin Laden had delivered in his public statement over the years so clearly they were doing the heavy lifting at home they were all on the same page in terms of their loyalty to Jihad their loyalty to their commitment rather to the cause for which Bin Laden had spent his life doing it was um it was a family affair at the end of Bin Laden's life the papers reveal

a man who is fearful paranoid and incapable of materializing most of his plans large and small he never achieves another large scale attack on the United States