Osama bin Laden Raid Documents Are Released by U.S.- nytimes

WASHINGTON — In his final years, Osama bin Laden spent his days sending missives to his subordinates, seeking to direct a terror network that appeared to have grown far beyond his control, and working his way through a pile of books that ranged from sober works of history and current affairs to wild conspiracy theories spun by infamous anti-Semites.

The latest insight into Bin Laden’s life in hiding comes from dozens of documents that American officials say were taken during the raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 and were declassified on Wednesday.

The material included nearly 80 documents – most of them letters between Bin Laden and his lieutenants – but the initial buzz generated by the release came largely from the list of books found in Bin Laden’s compound. That appeared to be by design: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence seized on Bin Laden’s reading list to promote the release, titling the web page listing all the now-public material “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf.”

Some of the books taken from his compound would be a familiar sight on the bookshelf of anyone interested in global affairs, such as “Obama’s Wars,” by Bob Woodward, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” by Paul Kennedy and “Imperial Hubris,” by Michael Scheuer, the former official who once ran the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bin Laden desk.

The timing of the release also gave the administration a chance to indirectly push back on a controversial article about Bin Laden’s death by Seymour M. Hersh’s in The London Review of Books. The article, which was published this month, said the Obama administration had lied about the raid, and claimed that it was staged in cooperation with Pakistan, which had been holding Bin Laden prisoner in his compound. - Read More at NYT

Osama bin Laden Raid Documents Are Released by U.S.

In Bin Laden Library: Illuminati and Bob Woodward