An historic event - the largest collection of material from a senior terrorist ever! woohoo! The Pentagon however removed the audio so as not to spread terrorist propaganda. Good thinking.
Link: abcnews.go.com
By MARTHA RADDATZ (@martharaddatz) and LUIS MARTINEZ (@LMartinezABC)
WASHINGTON, May 7, 2011
The government today released five videos found in Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showing the al Qaeda leader preparing a message to the United States and watching himself on television.
The first was a previously unreleased message from bin Laden directed to the United States that was believed to have been filmed between Oct. 9 and Nov. 5 2010.
In the video, which begins with animated pre-production work, he appears to have dyed his beard black, is wearing a gold shawl over a white vestment and is wearing a white skullcap.
The second video, which runs over a minute long, shows bin Laden watching himself on television and holding the remote control to change the channels between what appear to be Arabic news channels.
The clip begins with a long shot of the screen, showing a list of satellite channels. The camera then pulls out and bin Laden is shown sitting down with a blanket over his shoulders and a wool cap. His beard is grey and white.
At one point bin Laden asks the cameraman to go back to the TV screen so it can focus on him holding a weapons.
It is unclear when or where this video was made and whether bin Laden was watching a live broadcast or a tape.
The remaining three videos appear to be practice sessions, possibly for the first video. In each of them he appears to stumble in his speech, stop and begin over.
This footage is among the trove of evidence found after the U.S. raid on the compound Sunday, when bin Laden and four others were killed.
"This is the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever," a senior intelligence official said.
The cache includes digital, audio, video, personal correspondence and documents, the official said.
The materials found "clearly show that bin Laden remained an active leader in al Qaeda strategically, tactically and operationally," and not the figurehead he was assumed to be, "making the recent operation even more essential to our nations security," the official said.
The materials show that bin Laden was plotting and conspiring terrorism focused on the United States, the official said.
The DNA analysis shows unquestionably that this was bin Laden, the senior intelligence official said. Based on the DNA evidence, the odds of the person killed in the raid not being bin Laden were 1 in 11.8 quadrillion, the official said.
The cache of electronic and handwritten materials obtained by the Navy SEALs who raided the compound includes numerous hallmark al Qaeda plots, including plans for attacks on infrastructure targets such as water supply and transportation including rail and air, in what one official described as a "strategic guide for how to attack the U.S."
It is unclear just how active bin Laden was in coordinating any operations or in blessing overall strategies and plots. One official said bin Laden appears to have thought of himself as something of a head coach to al Qaeda.
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Originally Posted by KramerDSP
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