Osama bin Laden Planned 'New 9/11'

An analysis of Osama Bin Laden`s diary showed hat he had been plotting a new massive attack . Photo by BGNES.

The first analysis of the personal diary of Osama bin Laden, the contents of five computer hard disk drives and nearly 100 removable digital storage devices have shown that he had been planning a new massive strike against the US.

The al-Qaida leader had seemingly been trying to calculate how many Americans would have to be killed to force the US to retreat from the Middle East.

Bin Laden was convinced that nothing short of the 9/11 attack would have the desired effect, US intelligence officers informed, as quoted by the British newspaper Guardian.

According to Osama's writings, he continued to plan new actions and insist on greater activity, even though al-Qaida was on the defensive at the time.

Although he did not have the opportunity to personally co-ordinare concrete attacks, he was involved into every major al-Qaida plot, including those across Europe last year.

Bin Laden remained in touch with the most dangerous al-Qaida units around the world that specialists had assumed were operating independently.

The top terrorist, who was killed last Monday, called on his supporters to redirect their attention away from big cities, particularly New York, and focus on Los Angeles and other smaller cities.

In his opinion, that would make it easier to carry out an attack, or a series of attacks, taking the lives of numerous victims.

He also instructed his followers to pay greater attention to trains, leaving aside planes.

According to the report, Bin Laden also plotted ways to set politicians in Washington against each other.

According to Washington Post's account of the matter, Bin Laden was governing the network like a mafia boss from his prison cell, which made him so obsessed about the absolute priority of attacks in the US, causing tensions with his followers.

They allegedly preferred activities in Yemen, Somalia and Algeria because they were not thrilled with the opportunity of provoking a new counter-strike on the part of America.

In his messages, Osama insisted on recruiting non-Muslims suffering from "US oppression", mostly Afro-Americans and Spanish speaking ones, as well as on organizing something to mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The data recovered from Osama's hideout revealed more details about the terrorist himself and the manner of operation of al-Qaida than about the specific location of the separate members or the preparation of a concrete attack.

The intelligence officers were surprised to find that Bin Laden had not kept his diary hidden and had not codified access to the files to prevent them from leaking to the US.

The processing of the information involves a large number of people and huge resources. Millions of pages in Arabic need to be translated and analyzed in CIA's headquarters in North Virginia, which is why a significant number of experts and Arabic linguists have been recruited.

At the first stage, the data is being searched for keywords like the names of big American cities, al-Qaida figures, telephone numbers, etc., that would help the CIA and other intelligence agencies abroad to spot them before they change their location, following the strike against Osama.

Authorities say that Bin Laden had a relatively short list of senior members of the network, with whom he often communicated, sometimes using couriers. Names on the list include Ayman az-Zauahiri and Atia Abd al Rahman- a Libyan who recently climbed to number 3 in the structures.

According to sources of Washington Post, the top terrorist did not know the whereabouts of people like Zauahiri due to his relative isolation and the secrecy of the operations.

Bin Laden did not have a direct connection to US-born Anwar al Awlaki, the rising leader of the al-Qaida  in the Arabian Peninsula, considered  as the most dangerous cell to the US and the leading unit in the network.

"Obviously, we are not going to come across Excel tables with the names, addresses and phone numbers of  Bin Laden's followers. He rather acted like a director, giving more general instructions and recommendations, rather than concrete orders", the informers concluded.

Another important result of the first analyses of the diary was that Bin Laden did not take much interest in extremist activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that there was no proof of contacts with the Pakistani Army or the special intelligence services of the country.

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