'Bin Laden's Hard Drives': Osama was a narcissist who applied his own definition of the Quran to justify killings
Nineteen years later, the horrors of the 9/11 attacks in America still persist. Nearly everyone vividly remembers where they were when they first saw the news about two hijacked airplanes being flown 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. In total, nearly 3,000 people were killed that day in one of the biggest terrorist attacks the world had ever seen.
The mastermind of that attack was soon determined to be Osama Bin Laden, the son of a millionaire Yemeni construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi Arabian royal family. Bin Laden shot to the top of the United States' and much of the world's most-wanted lists and he would remain elusive for nearly a decade until 2011 when under the orders of the then-president Barack Obama, the US military found Bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan and killed him in 2011.
Among many of 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 entertainment. National Geographic's latest special, 'Bin Laden's Hard Drives' takes an in-depth look at many of the materials stored on the hard drives in the compound, as well as personal letters. What has been presented of Bin Laden in public by himself and the Al Qaeda have footage where Bin Laden calmly and eloquently speaks his message, but the new special shows the personality he hid from those outside his compound.
In certain footage, Bin Laden can be seen watching the news on his satellite television. The terrorist would particularly look for news and programs about the 9/11 attacks, the Al Qaeda and about himself. If the visuals changed to something he did not desire -- like a female news anchor or news about other matters, or even press conferences by President Obama, Bin Laden would switch on the menu function to cover the screen with the list of channels available.
Bin Laden also understood that being humble provided him with a commanding aura and he adopted that persona with those around him. From the multiple video footage found in his Pakistan compound, experts uncovered many unused takes of Bin Laden reading his speeches. He was very conscious about the way he presented himself and whenever he felt he made an error, he would put a silent cue (lightly tapping the desk in front of him) to cut and shoot again.
While the Quran condemns the killing of non-combatants, as mentioned by Dalia Mogahed, American-Muslim scholar and Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Bin Laden would often tweak the meaning of the words in the Quran to justify his own actions and the killings. He used the political situation to justify killing Americans, something that made him "not an extremist," but a "deviant revisionist," according to Mogahed.
'Bin Laden's Hard Drives' airs on National Geographic on September 10, at 9/8c.