THE US gathered an intelligence cache the size of a “small college library” during the attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound last week.
The hoard indicated evidence that the terrorist leader had an operational as well as symbolic role for al-Qaeda, according to a senior US official.
“The amount of intelligence that we got as a result of the raid, in addition to taking out bin Laden, is really extraordinary,” said White House national security adviser Tom Donilon, in an interview with CNN yesterday. “It turns out that this is the largest cache of information . . . gotten from any terrorist in one operation. It is about the size of a small college library.”
As intelligence officials began sifting through the data recovered from the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1st, Mr Donilon hailed the importance of the mission as a turning point in the battle against al-Qaeda’s efforts to plan terrorist attacks.
“What we now know, again taking a look initially here, is that [bin Laden] had obviously an operational and strategic role and a propaganda role for al-Qaeda,” he said, adding that the leader’s demise would affect the organisation’s efforts to develop additional leadership and carry out operations.
Meanwhile, US president Barack Obama ratcheted up the pressure on Pakistan, demanding that the Pakistani government investigates whether its people were involved in a network to support bin Laden in his hideout. His comments are his most direct yet on Pakistan's possible complicity with terrorism. He told the CBS show 60 Minutesthat bin Laden must have had "some sort of support network" inside the country.
“We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, outside of government, and that’s something we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” he said.
President Obama’s words add to a sustained verbal attack by the US administration on the Pakistani government in the wake of the raid on the al-Qaeda leader’s safe house in the middle of a busy garrison town that is home to three regiments, a military academy and thousands of soldiers.
A senior intelligence official told a Pentagon briefing on Saturday that the US was “working around the clock” to identify imminent threats and al-Qaeda networks and was already disseminating information within the US government and to US allies.
The information discovered at the compound included handwritten and printed materials, video, audio and data files. Some of the previously unseen video footage was released by the US on Saturday. But in Pakistan there was dispute over the apparent assessment of bin Laden’s hideout as the nerve centre of al-Qaeda.
A Pakistani intelligence officer said: “The compound was isolated from the rest of the world. There were no phone connections and no internet. How can a nerve centre work in hollow space.”
Shahzad Chaudhry, former Pakistan air force officer and now a security commentator, added: “From the videos which have come out so far that I have seen, it is hard to conclude that the house was an al-Qaeda core centre. It looked more like the place for hiding for the world’s most hunted man.”
With US-Pakistani relations severely tested by the raid, Mr Donilon said he had not seen any evidence that the political, military or intelligence leadership of Pakistan knew about Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad.
But Mr Donilon said Pakistan needed to investigate “how Osama bin Laden came to this place as his home for the last six years”. He added that Washington was asking Islamabad to provide access to any material it recovered from the compound.
He told NBC that the US also wanted to talk to bin Laden’s three widows, who are in Pakistani custody, and that this would answer questions about whether Pakistani authorities helped hide the al-Qaeda leader while he was on the run.
Until now most western criticism has been directed at Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. Some US officials have insinuated that the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) helped to harbour bin Laden.
The ISI is hitting back with judicious media leaks. In a move bound to infuriate the US, several Pakistani television stations on Friday named the CIA station chief in Islamabad as Mark Carlton. The stations said he had been given a verbal roasting by the ISI chief, Gen Shuja Pasha.
The naming is sensitive because the previous CIA chief in Islamabad quit his position in December over security worries after being named in a court case and in the national media. Some US officials blamed the ISI for the leak.
Bin Laden’s natural successor is Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian militant, whom Mr Donilon described as the number one terrorist that “we’re looking for in the world”.
However, a US intelligence official on Saturday said he was not popular among some al-Qaeda circles and was seen as an uncharismatic. – (The Financial Times Limited 2011/Guardian service)