Saul David
Fri, April 8, 2022
Osama Bin Laden was plotting a coordinated attack on supertankers
carrying oil to the United States when he died in 2004 - Alamy
In the early hours of May 2 2011, a team of Navy Seals discovered and killed Osama Bin Laden – the leader of al-Qaeda, architect of 9/11 and the most hunted man on the globe – in a raid on a domestic compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad. With their strict 30-minute deadline almost up, the Seals requested more time on the ground because they had found “a whole s--- ton of computers and electronic gear on the second floor”.
Permission was granted, and during the next 18 minutes more than 470,000 files were recovered, including “nearly 6,000 Arabic pages of internal al-Qaeda communiqués that were never intended for public consumption”. But for the Seals’ “courageous efforts” during those perilous additional minutes, writes Nelly Lahoud, the Bin Laden papers would never have come to light.
The papers – recently declassified and now analysed in detail for the first time by Lahoud, an Arabic-speaking expert in security and counter-terrorism – offer an extraordinary insight into the inner workings of Al-Qaeda, both before and after 9/11, and lay bare the terrorist organisation’s closely guarded plans, ambitions and frustrations.
The first of many revelations is a scribbled note by Bin Laden on a sheet of paper torn from a spiral notebook, headed “The Birth of the Idea of September 11”. In the note he explains that he had been reading a news report about the disgruntled pilot al-Batouty who deliberately crashed EgyptAir Flight 990 from New York to Cairo off the New England coast, killing 217 people, on October 31 1999. Turning to his associates, Bin Laden asked: “Why didn’t he crash it into a financial tower?”
Frustrated that al-Batouty had not put his thirst for vengeance to better use, Bin Laden came up with the plan to fly planes into the symbols of American power: the financial district in New York, and the Pentagon and Capitol Building in Washington DC
In the early hours of May 2 2011, a team of Navy Seals discovered and killed Osama Bin Laden – the leader of al-Qaeda, architect of 9/11 and the most hunted man on the globe – in a raid on a domestic compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad. With their strict 30-minute deadline almost up, the Seals requested more time on the ground because they had found “a whole s--- ton of computers and electronic gear on the second floor”.
Permission was granted, and during the next 18 minutes more than 470,000 files were recovered, including “nearly 6,000 Arabic pages of internal al-Qaeda communiqués that were never intended for public consumption”. But for the Seals’ “courageous efforts” during those perilous additional minutes, writes Nelly Lahoud, the Bin Laden papers would never have come to light.
The papers – recently declassified and now analysed in detail for the first time by Lahoud, an Arabic-speaking expert in security and counter-terrorism – offer an extraordinary insight into the inner workings of Al-Qaeda, both before and after 9/11, and lay bare the terrorist organisation’s closely guarded plans, ambitions and frustrations.
The first of many revelations is a scribbled note by Bin Laden on a sheet of paper torn from a spiral notebook, headed “The Birth of the Idea of September 11”. In the note he explains that he had been reading a news report about the disgruntled pilot al-Batouty who deliberately crashed EgyptAir Flight 990 from New York to Cairo off the New England coast, killing 217 people, on October 31 1999. Turning to his associates, Bin Laden asked: “Why didn’t he crash it into a financial tower?”
Frustrated that al-Batouty had not put his thirst for vengeance to better use, Bin Laden came up with the plan to fly planes into the symbols of American power: the financial district in New York, and the Pentagon and Capitol Building in Washington DC
.
'Why didn’t he crash it into a financial tower?':
'Why didn’t he crash it into a financial tower?':
Bin Laden got the idea for 9/11 from the 1999 EgyptAir crash - Patrick Sison
“This is how the idea of 9/11 was conceived and developed in my head,” wrote Bin Laden, “and that is when we began the planning.” The 9/11 Commission Report named Khaled Sheikh Muhammed as the “architect” of the attacks. Yet he is not mentioned in Bin Laden’s notes, “although he may have been instrumental in other ways later on”.
Most commentators have assumed that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar did not know about 9/11 in advance. We learn, however, from Bin Laden’s handwritten notes, that “consultation with other [Jihadist] groups, including the Taliban, preceded the international attacks al-Qaeda orchestrated from Afghanistan”. The bombings in East Africa in 1998, for example, were “supported by everyone”.
Moreover, Lahoud suspects that al-Qaeda’s assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, a Taliban enemy, on the eve of 9/11 was not a coincidence, but a quid pro quo for Mullah Omar approving the attack on America. The miscalculation by al-Qaeda and its allies was not to anticipate that America would respond by launching a full-scale war on Afghanistan. The “worst they had envisaged”, writes Lahoud, was “limited US airstrikes”.
Exactly where Bin Laden went after he fled the Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan in late 2001 is unclear. Lahoud suspects North Waziristan, in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, and later Abbottabad. What is not in doubt is the ineffectiveness of al-Qaeda after 9/11. With most of its leaders in hiding or imprisoned in Iran, it failed to launch a single international operation, and was restricted to applauding other jihadist copycat acts, like 7/7 in London in 2005, that had no direct contribution from al-Qaeda. Had Western governments understood this, there might have been no need to invade Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan two years earlier, wars of aggression that were partly fought to suppress international terrorism.
The papers also reveal that, from 2004, Bin Laden worked tirelessly to rebuild his shattered organisation and at the time of his death was planning another “spectacular”: a coordinated attack on supertankers carrying oil to the United States. He hoped to choke off a third of America’s oil supply, thus producing an economic meltdown and public protests that would lead to a change in US foreign policy.
“This is how the idea of 9/11 was conceived and developed in my head,” wrote Bin Laden, “and that is when we began the planning.” The 9/11 Commission Report named Khaled Sheikh Muhammed as the “architect” of the attacks. Yet he is not mentioned in Bin Laden’s notes, “although he may have been instrumental in other ways later on”.
Most commentators have assumed that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar did not know about 9/11 in advance. We learn, however, from Bin Laden’s handwritten notes, that “consultation with other [Jihadist] groups, including the Taliban, preceded the international attacks al-Qaeda orchestrated from Afghanistan”. The bombings in East Africa in 1998, for example, were “supported by everyone”.
Moreover, Lahoud suspects that al-Qaeda’s assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, a Taliban enemy, on the eve of 9/11 was not a coincidence, but a quid pro quo for Mullah Omar approving the attack on America. The miscalculation by al-Qaeda and its allies was not to anticipate that America would respond by launching a full-scale war on Afghanistan. The “worst they had envisaged”, writes Lahoud, was “limited US airstrikes”.
Exactly where Bin Laden went after he fled the Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan in late 2001 is unclear. Lahoud suspects North Waziristan, in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, and later Abbottabad. What is not in doubt is the ineffectiveness of al-Qaeda after 9/11. With most of its leaders in hiding or imprisoned in Iran, it failed to launch a single international operation, and was restricted to applauding other jihadist copycat acts, like 7/7 in London in 2005, that had no direct contribution from al-Qaeda. Had Western governments understood this, there might have been no need to invade Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan two years earlier, wars of aggression that were partly fought to suppress international terrorism.
The papers also reveal that, from 2004, Bin Laden worked tirelessly to rebuild his shattered organisation and at the time of his death was planning another “spectacular”: a coordinated attack on supertankers carrying oil to the United States. He hoped to choke off a third of America’s oil supply, thus producing an economic meltdown and public protests that would lead to a change in US foreign policy.
The remains of Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, photographed in 2021 - Saiyna Bashir
Might it have worked? Not according to former US general Joseph Votel. Al-Qaeda could have sunk the tankers, argues Votel, but this would not have destroyed the US economy. This is yet more evidence for Lahoud of the “vast chasm” between Bin Laden’s “global vision and the absence of the means by which to realize it”.
When the Seals assaulted the Abbottabad compound – built in 2005 – they discovered two of Bin Laden’s wives and multiple children and grandchildren. So high was the risk of discovery by drone or satellite that the children were not even allowed to play in the courtyard, nor did anyone have access to the internet or a phone.
It was a grim, self-sufficient existence. They kept goats, chickens and a cow, and relied sparingly on their two “security guards” – local Pakistani supporters – to buy other basic needs. “We bake our own bread,” wrote Bin Laden, “and purchase grains in bulk. Our regular shopping consists of fruit and vegetables.” Basic medicines were kept at the house, and doctors were consulted only in an emergency. Two of Bin Laden’s daughters, Sumaya and Mariam, played a key role helping their father with his public statements.
There is one final revelation. After Bin Laden’s death, the CIA claimed they were able to identify his compound by intercepting calls made by one of his Pakistani security guards, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. This, says Lahoud, was deliberate disinformation to protect the probable informant, Abu al-Harish al-Sindi, who was one of three trusted intermediaries between Bin Laden and his followers in North Waziristan. From the papers, Lahoud discovers that al-Sindi was arrested by the Pakistani security service, ISI, in January 2011. Bin Laden knew this, but took no precautions.
Interestingly, al-Sindi did not know that the author of the letters he carried was Bin Laden. The CIA were also uncertain, which is why “President Obama authorized the Abbottabad raid on a provability basis”. The CIA then lied about al-Kuwaiti’s involvement in their post-operation debrief to protect the real source, and because they had “a smaller but sizeable fish to fry”: Bin Laden’s deputy Atiya, who was killed by a drone strike four months later.
Lahoud’s story jumps around thematically, and is light on colourful narrative, but is never less than gripping.
By over-estimating al-Qaeda’s capabilities, and under-estimating those of other Jihadi groups (Islamic State, for one), the West paid a high price. In the end, concludes Lahoud, Bin Laden’s “repeated miscalculations meant that his leonine post-9/11 goals did not go beyond empty threats, unexecuted plans, and more than a little wishful thinking”.
The Bin Laden Papers by Nelly Lahoud is published by Yale at £18.99.
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