Bin Laden Letters of the Day

A study of newly declassified documents seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound a year ago reveals the Al-Qaida leader to have had a tumultuous relationship with his "affiliates" around the world; the documents show also that Bin Laden had chosen CBS as the recipient of a Sept. 11 anniversary propaganda message by Al-Qaida. The series of 17 letters penned by Bin Laden to his henchmen, dating from September 2006 to the weeks leading to his death in 2011, has been made available in Arabic and their helpful English translations by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A cheat sheet to the letters -- which detail Bin Laden's increasingly disenchanted perceptions of Iran, Pakistan, and the Arab Spring and the dysfunction within his own network -- can be found here. [dailyintel]