Osama bin Laden kept a personal journal in which he contemplated how to kill as many Americans as possible, including in terrorist attacks against Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, according to U.S. officials.Read it all at the link upstairs.
The handwritten journal was part of a vast cache of digital and printed material hauled away from Bin Laden's hide-out after U.S. Navy SEALs killed him last week in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
One official said Wednesday that the trove provided "terabytes" of new information about Al Qaeda.
The official described the journal as full of planning ideas and outlines of potential operations — "aspirational guidance" on how to kill the maximum number of people rather than specific proposals or plots that were actually underway.
In one passage, Bin Laden wondered how many Americans would have to die in U.S. cities to force the U.S. government to withdraw from the Arab world. He concluded that it would require another mass murder on the scale of the Sept. 11 attacks to spur a reversal in U.S. policy, an official said.
The officials declined to provide details about potential plots in Los Angeles and Chicago. Bin Laden discussed an operation in Washington, one official said, "because of its iconic value."
Bin Laden on Killing Americans
At LAT, "Osama bin Laden's journal contains his thoughts on killing Americans":