'Bin Laden's Hard Drives': Was Osama planning 'something bigger' than the 9/11 attacks?
September 11, 2001, changed the course of American history when two planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Four planes were hijacked in total, with one flying into the Pentagon and another crashing in a field after the passengers thwarted the terrorists' attack. In total, nearly 3,000 people were killed that day in one of the biggest terror attacks the world had ever seen.
The mastermind behind the attack was revealed to be Osama Bin Laden, a name etched in history as the United States launched investigations and missions to find the man responsible for the gruesome attack. It was not until Barack Obama's tenure as the President that the US military found Bin Laden in his Pakistan compound and killed him in 2011, bringing to an end a decade-long search for the most wanted man in America.
Among Bin Laden's personal effects at the compound, the military seized many of his hard drives which were said to contain files of 'Tom & Jerry' and other forms of western entertainment. National Geographic's latest special, ‘Bin Laden’s Hard Drives' is an in-depth examination of newly declassified hard drives and letters taken from the compound. These uncovered documents give an insight into the man Bin Laden was in his final years.
While Bin Laden was cooped up in his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan — with his family, growing their own vegetables and chickens, and burning their own trash — he employed couriers to carry letters and material in and out of the compound. When they suggested that Bin Laden use emails because using couriers was difficult, Bin Laden quashed the suggestion, knowing that it could be hacked by intelligence agencies.
Among the letters found on his compound, experts also realized that Bin Laden was still plotting and planning while hiding in his modest compound. He still wanted to retain control of the agency and recreate the 9/11 attacks even while in hiding. Bin Laden was planning an attack even bigger than the 9/11 attacks — something he considered his greatest accomplishment. Bin Laden wanted to do "something bigger" and much larger, according to CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen, who had interviewed Bin Laden in 1997, four years before the attack on the World Trade Centre towers.
From the letters, it is understood that Bin Laden felt that the 9/11 attacks were not sufficient — the bigger the attack, the more that the Americans would pull out of the Middle East, a view that Bergen considered was naive. From his letters, experts also derive that Bin Laden was delusional and a dreamer, someone who was not afraid to use religion to his own advantage and would often tweak the meanings of the words of the Quran to suit himself and justify the killings of non-combatants — something that is not condoned in the Islamic religious text.
Among the many materials found on the hard drives, there was also pornography. Experts are not sure whether Bin Laden watched the pornography, but Ali Soufan, former FBI special agent who led investigations into Al Qaeda and was one of the first to uncover the link between the terrorist outfit and 9/11, believes that the pornographic images and videos could have been used to text encoded messages back and forth between Bin Laden and other insurgents.
'Bin Laden's Hard Drives' airs on National Geographic on September 10 at 9/8c.
