Osama bin Laden fixated on attacking U.S. targets, documents reveal

During his years in hiding, Osama bin Laden urged followers to concentrate on attacking Americans and wrote bittersweet letters to one of his wives and his children, according to documents released Wednesday by U.S. intelligence officials.

The documents were seized in the al-Qaeda leader's compound during the raid in which bin Laden was killed. More than 100 were declassified and published on the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 

The documents include a fill-in-the-blanks job application for terrorist candidates that ranges from typical questions about education and hobbies to "Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?"

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​Altogether, the 103 papers and videos add new texture to the world's picture of the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, much of it in his own words. They include videos and images of letters in Arabic, with the English translations by intelligence officials.

The material was recovered in the May 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. It said the material was being made public after a rigorous review by government agencies, as required by a 2014 law.

U.S. officials had said at the time of his death that they believed bin Laden had become so isolated in his hideout that he no longer exercised the level of control over al-Qaeda operations that he had in the past.

Letter mocks 'war on terror'

In one letter, bin Laden urges one of his deputies to inform "our brothers" they must keep their focus on fighting Americans. Their "job is to uproot the obnoxious tree by concentrating on its American trunk, and to avoid being occupied with the local security forces," bin Laden writes.

Another bin Laden letter mocks President George W. Bush's "war on terror," saying it had not achieved stability in Iraq or Afghanistan and questioning why U.S. troops were "searching for the lost phantom" — weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No date is included on the U.S. translation.

In a video letter to one of his wives, also described as bin Laden's "last will," he says, "Know that you do fill my heart with love, beautiful memories, and your long suffering of tense situations in order to appease me and be kind to me."

Among the documents is an al-Qaeda job application. According to a U.S. translation, applicants for the terrorist roster were asked a battery of sometimes surprisingly mundane questions, such as:

• Any hobbies or pastimes?
• What is your favourite material: science or literature?
• Date of your arrival in the land of jihad.
• Have you ever been convicted by any court? When and for what offence?
• Do you have any chronic or hereditary diseases?

Other questions were of a more chilling variety:

• Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?
• Who should we contact in case you become a martyr? Provide address and phone numbers.

Controversial article calls U.S. account bogus

The release of the documents follows a controversial article from U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh, who said the official account from the Obama administration about bin Laden's death is false.

The 10,000-word story, published in the London Review of Books on May 10, alleges that bin Laden had been held prisoner by Pakistan's military-intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence at the Abbottabad compound since 2006.

The piece, based largely on an anonymous source, also alleged that the CIA did not find out where bin Laden was by tracking his couriers, as claimed by the White House. Rather, a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer offered the tip in return for much of the $25-million US reward.

"While Obama did order the raid and the SEAL team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration's account were false," Hersh wrote.

The White House did not respond to Hersh's requests for comment, but dismissed the allegations after the article was published.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest described the story as "riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods."

"The former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, has said that every sentence was wrong," Earnest told reporters in a briefing a day after Hersh's piece was published.