And when I gave the order, they were ready.
And in recent days, the whole world has learned just how ready they were.
The United States has the body of Osama bin Laden.
Navy SEALs went to the compound
in the middle of the night in Pakistan
and ultimately killed Osama bin Laden.
Thousands of Americans gathered in celebration
of Osama bin Laden’s death.
President Obama broke the news to the nation late last night.
The mission was supposed to be completed within 30 minutes,
but the SEALs asked for extra time on the ground
when they discovered the electronic gear
and computers on the second floor.
We’re talking a massive volume of files,
including text, audio, and videos.
At the time, we had no idea what they discovered.
Their internal communications
turned out to be nearly 6,000 Arabic pages.
And for the first time,
we had al Qaeda's letters that were not meant for public consumption.
These were al Qaeda’s closely guarded secrets,
and they were brimming with revelations.
[INVESTIGATORS]
My name is Nelly Lahoud,
and I’m the author of
The Bin Laden Papers
is based on all of al Qaeda’s internal communications
that were recovered during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden
in Abbottabad in May 2011.
A team of two dozen Navy SEALs flew under the cover of darkness
into Abbottabad, Pakistan, to carry out
one of the most important counterterrorism missions in history:
to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
I’d been studying al Qaeda for a very long time.
After all, al Qaeda dominated the news for nearly a decade.
We’ve got to get out of the way!
This group and its leader,
a person named Osama bin Laden,
are linked to many other organizations.
When the CIA declassified
everything that’s going to declassify on its own website,
we’re talking a massive volume of files,
including text, audio, and videos.
That's when my solo work on the book proceeded,
and this is when I started putting together the information.
With the help of two research assistants,
we went through all the text files,
nearly 97,000 files.
It was challenging because some letters were dated.
Some of them were not.
Sensitive informations were not discussed in the letters.
For instance, locations,
where bin Laden was, where his associates were,
instead of putting down the names, you would find
“personality number one, personality number two.”
But then, fortunately, another recovered letter
would have the exact names corresponding to each personality.
You get to a point where it feels as if I’m inhabiting
the world of the people whose letters I was reading.
This is when things started falling into place.
One of the biggest...
surprises is to discover that al Qaeda was shattered post 9/11.
The public statements of al Qaeda’s leaders
continue to cheer various international terrorist attacks
that occurred post 9/11.
But it is also very clear from the letters
that their operational capabilities were destroyed.
“Our reflections and troubles
following the fall of the Islamic Emirate
were heart-rending.
The weakness, failure, and aimlessness that befell us
were harrowing.”
So this kind of corresponds to the idea that they were shattered
and also to the fact that bin Laden had to disappear.
We discovered that al Qaeda’s international terrorism
came to a halt,
and al Qaeda wasn’t able to carry out
any international terrorist attacks post-9/11.
The only attack that al Qaeda did carry out after 9/11
was the 2002 Mombasa attacks.
At the Paradise Hotel today,
investigators were still picking through the rubble,
and fires were still burning more than 24 hours after the attack.
Kenya’s president, Daniel arap Moi,
inspected the damage and called it an outrage.
Today, a detonator was found in the rubble,
and police said they were questioning 12 people.
Some of the letters paint a vivid portrait
of family life in the compound.
Not a cave in the mountains
but a fortified compound in a well-heeled suburb
of the peaceful Pakistani town of Abbottabad.
So at the time of the raid,
there were 16 people who lived in the compound
in bin Laden’s household.
Nine of these people were children.
We find out about their daily schedule.
And it was somewhat disorienting
to discover the children would go to him in the evenings for stories,
and he would give them prizes after reciting poetry.
It was shocking to get to know a little bit more about
the bin Laden that we knew.
For years, this woman lived next door to the world’s most wanted man.
She never imagined Osama bin Laden
was among the mysterious occupants over the wall.
For residents, this was simply the home of a very private family
who kept themselves to themselves.
Very interesting.
We learned that the bin Ladens
tried to be as self-sufficient as possible.
That’s because they didn’t want to draw attention.
We discover in this letter much more about life in the compound.
We find here bin Laden describing that,
“We bake our own bread and purchase grains in bulk.
Our regular shopping needs consist of fruit and vegetables.”
It wasn't them who was doing the purchasing.
It was the security guards next door who did that for them.
They did not leave the compound except for emergencies.
“In general, the children do not need to see the doctor
unless they suffer from a toothache or a broken bone.”
One of the unique documents,
a 220-page family document that was handwritten,
it transcribed family conversations that occurred in the compound
during the last few months of bin Laden’s life.
We find the extent to which bin Laden didn’t just rely on his daughters,
he actively solicited their support.
Women do not play an active and public role in al Qaeda.
So it was quite surprising to find out
how critical bin Laden’s daughters were for the work of al Qaeda.
One letter describes that bin Laden’s daughters
Miriam and Sumaiya,
that their writings are broadcast on TV,
meaning that they were actually co-authoring
the public statements that their father delivered.
Khalid, too, was very supportive of his father,
but you could also sense from the letters that he was struggling.
We find him pouring out his feelings.
“I am terribly exhausted by our situation.
I also feel that my capabilities have regressed by more than 50 percent
due to the constant pressure of your security situation,
which looms over our lives.”
This is just to show how depressed he was.
Bin Laden wouldn’t have known about this.
Khalid was struggling with recording his father.
We know from his letters to the jihadi media As-Sahab
that his video recordings of his father weren’t that good.
And in fact, one of them had been criticized in the media.
They were concerned that perhaps this was not legitimate,
that it was a fake video.
People of America, I shall be speaking,
so lend me your ears.
The last thing that I expected to discover in the letters
was how the intelligence agencies
managed to discover bin Laden’s hideout.
The final trail to getting bin Laden really started in 2003
when the CIA focused heavily
on bin Laden’s use of couriers to communicate.
The intelligence briefings that followed the Abbottabad raid
indicated that bin Laden’s hideout
was discovered by tracking down his courier,
and they were referring to Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was bin Laden’s security guard,
and it is very clear from the letters that he was not bin Laden’s courier.
I present my own alternative explanation
on how bin Laden's hideout was discovered.
We learn that bin Laden communicated with his associates
through a closed circle.
There was one intermediary on the side of North Waziristan,
another on the side of bin Laden,
and a courier in between.
We discover in the letters
that the intermediary on the side of North Waziristan
was briefly captured by the Pakistani intelligence,
but he was released.
But in January 2011,
the courier himself was captured.
My sense is it was clearly the capture of the real courier
that may very well have led to bin Laden’s hideout.
Now, of course, the intelligence agencies
didn’t mention the real courier,
and it’s understandable.
They had every reason not to tell us the full story,
most likely because they were still interested
in pursuing other al Qaeda leaders in North Waziristan.
And some of them were actually either captured
or killed soon after the raid.
The letters were not written for public consumption,
and you had to really piece different clues together
in order to appreciate what’s happening.
So it’s one thing to read the letter and get a rough understanding,
but it’s another to be able to piece them together.
We get to discover a different side of bin Laden,
and it was somewhat disorienting.
What I didn’t expect was the revelations in the letters
was going to change the narrative about al Qaeda.
And it’s a different narrative that we discover through the letters.
It’s a different history of al Qaeda that we discover through the letters.