Why Obama did not want to release bin Laden documents

Clifford May writes at Jewish World Review,

On May 2, 2011, a Navy SEAL team made a brief stop in Abbottabad, Pakistan where they terminated Osama bin Laden's life and then moved on to their second mission: collecting as much information as possible from within the al Qaeda leader's compound.

They carried off computers, memoranda, photos, audio files, even a 228-page handwritten diary - "the single largest collection of senior terrorists' materials ever," a Pentagon briefer told reporters five days later.

Over the years since, what have we learned from this treasure trove? Almost nothing. Why not? Because President Obama promptly put almost all of it under lock and key.

Two of my colleagues, Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, senior fellows of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editors of FDD's Long War Journal, strenuously argued against that decision. They believed it served no purpose - or at least no good purpose. (More on that in a moment.) They advocated for the release of the materials to scholars, journalists, policymakers, legislators and the public.

As a member of Congress, Mike Pompeo sympathized with their efforts. Last week, as CIA director, he released 470,000 documents, images and computer files from the Abbottabad collection. He granted FDD's Long War Journal a few days advance access to this haul.

So much material, much of it never even translated, cannot be analyzed overnight. But Mr. Joscelyn, Mr. Roggio and other FDD researchers have begun the process, and they've already drawn a few significant conclusions.

For one, it's clear that "when U.S. forces knocked down his door," bin Laden was not, as Mr. Obama had portrayed him, in retirement or a mere figurehead. Right up until the last moments of his life he "was communicating with subordinates around the globe."

As for al Qaeda, it was not, as Mr. Obama repeatedly claimed, "on the run" or "on the path to defeat." It was expanding and strategically reorganizing.

Perhaps most significant to current policy debates is a 19-page assessment by a senior al Qaeda operative attesting that the Islamic Republic of Iran supplied its "Saudi brothers" in al Qaeda with "everything needed" to battle the U.S. - visas, money, arms and even "training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon."

Iran also provided safe haven for al Qaeda fighters "in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf." In a separate memo, bin Laden himself makes clear that by 2007 Iran had become al Qaeda's "main artery for funds, personnel, and communication."

This confirms what some of us have been arguing for years: that al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran are not so much enemies as rivals. They compete and quarrel. They have profound theological differences: Al Qaeda is Sunni, Iran's mullahs are Shia. For 1,400 years, no peace process has resolved the split between these two readings of Islam.

But al Qaeda and the theocrats in Tehran do manage to cooperate, collaborate and collude. Both believe they have a religious duty to wage a jihad against "arrogant" - meaning insufficiently submissive - infidels, with Americans and Israelis at the top of their lists.

Which brings us back to the question: Why didn't President Obama want this material released? I'm afraid the answer is obvious: It would have bolstered opposition to his nuclear deal - his agreement to provide Tehran with legitimacy and billions of dollars while ignoring its ballistic missile program, continuing sponsorship of terrorism and egregious human rights violations; all in exchange for the regime's promise to delay a nuclear weapons program whose existence it denies.

This confirms what some of us have been arguing for years: that al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran are not so much enemies as rivals. They compete and quarrel. They have profound theological differences: Al Qaeda is Sunni, Iran's mullahs are Shia. For 1,400 years, no peace process has resolved the split between these two readings of Islam.

But al Qaeda and the theocrats in Tehran do manage to cooperate, collaborate and collude. Both believe they have a religious duty to wage a jihad against "arrogant" - meaning insufficiently submissive - infidels, with Americans and Israelis at the top of their lists.

Which brings us back to the question: Why didn't President Obama want this material released? I'm afraid the answer is obvious: It would have bolstered opposition to his nuclear deal - his agreement to provide Tehran with legitimacy and billions of dollars while ignoring its ballistic missile program, continuing sponsorship of terrorism and egregious human rights violations; all in exchange for the regime's promise to delay a nuclear weapons program whose existence it denies.

In a penetrating new article, Weekly Standard editor in chief Stephen Hayes, also a longtime and ardent advocate for the release of the materials, recalls that one of the last acts of the Obama administration was to issue a press release titled "Closing the Book on Bin Laden: Intelligence Community Releases Final Abbottabad Documents."

In fact, the Obama administration had released only 571 out of tens of thousands of potentially revealing documents and files. And these carefully selected materials were made public only because the National Intelligence Authorization Act of 2014 forced the hand of Mr. Obama's director of national intelligence. Few in the mainstream media bothered to point that out. Fewer still lodged objections. "This is what the politicization of intelligence looks like," Mr. Hayes concludes.

Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, also would have preferred that the Abbottabad collection never see the light of day. He and his apologists have long been promoting Iran as an essentially normal and progressive nation, keen on regional stability, fighting terrorists, and insisting only on its right to self-defense.

In response to the release, Mr. Zarif tweeted: "A record low for the reach of petrodollars: CIA & FDD fake news w/ selective AlQaeda docs re: Iran can't whitewash role of US allies in 9/11."

Best I can figure, he's alleging that the Saudis paid both the CIA and FDD to cherry-pick documents to make it appear that Iran was implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks. Even with 140-character maximum, I'd have expected him to do better.

Other highlights of last week's document release: the first video images we've seen of a grown-up Hamza bin Laden, a favorite son of the terrorist chief who is almost certainly training to become a next-generation al Qaeda leader. The video was taken at his wedding ceremony, a festive affair held in - did you guess? - Iran.

Finally, a note on bin Laden's diary. In it, he offers praise for Al Jazeera, Qatar's popular news-and-propaganda outlet. He also reflects on the Muslim Brotherhood - how it influenced his view of the world and led him to commit his life to jihad. Useful for us to know that, don't you think?

The Obama administration's politicization of the bin Laden documents: "Obama and his advisers saw the enemy they wanted to see, not the one they were actually fighting."

Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn write in the Weekly Standard about The Final Obama Scandal. It is about the hundreds of thousands of documents found in Osama bin Laden's compound during the May 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The press statement that accompanied the release this month made an unexpected declaration: This batch of newly released documents would be the last one.

...Sources who have described the cache to THE WEEKLY STANDARD over the years have claimed that the number of captured documents, including even extraneous materials and duplicates, totals more than 1 million. ...this last batch of 49 documents brings the total number released to 571.

..."[Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and the old administration may want this to be closed, but it's far from closed," says Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). "Now the truth will begin to come out. It's just the beginning."

...Based on his conversations with analysts who have worked on the documents, Nunes believes that many of those not yet released will contradict Obama administration claims about al Qaeda, its relationships, and its operations.

Why do the documents still matter? Over the course of eight years, President Obama and his advisers repeatedly downplayed the jihadist threat. The story of how bin Laden's documents were mischaracterized and mishandled offers important insights into how the administration pushed a deceptive narrative about al Qaeda and its branches around the globe. The jihadist threat grew—not diminished—over the course of the Obama administration. To this day, America and its allies continue to fight al Qaeda everywhere from West Africa to South Asia.

Because of its barbarism, massive land grabs, and multiple attacks in the West, the Islamic State (ISIS) dominates headlines these days. The Islamic State makes itself easy to see. But al Qaeda, the organization that birthed ISIS, is still alive and thriving, often masking the extent of its operations and influence. Since 2011, al Qaeda has grown rapidly in jihadist hotspots such as Syria, where today the group has 10,000 or more fighters, its largest guerrilla army yet.

...The Obama White House wanted people to believe that al Qaeda's "core" leadership had little sway outside of South Asia. But in the final months of Obama's presidency, with the undeniable reality of al Qaeda's growth and strength, his officials began to tell a different story.

Testifying before the Senate on June 28, 2016, Brett H. McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, discussed al Qaeda's arm in Syria, al-Nusra Front. "With direct ties to Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, Nusra is now al Qaeda's largest formal affiliate in history," McGurk said.

So the Obama policy failed, for reasons that were entirely predictable, and the administration continued to downplay al Qaeda's role in Afghanistan long after they had evidence that contradicted their own assessments. None of this kept President Obama from declaring in May 2013 that "the Afghan war is coming to an end."

If many Americans have forgotten about Afghanistan, following the lead of their president, al Qaeda has not. And now the Trump administration inherits an Afghanistan with an entrenched and emboldened al Qaeda, still working side by side with the Taliban.

Perhaps the most egregious example of the Obama administration's politicization of the bin Laden documents concerns the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda. In the statement accompanying ODNI's latest release, we are told that the documents therein demonstrate bin Laden's "hatred, suspicion of Iran." The statement further claims that this antipathy "mirrors themes in previous releases" from bin Laden's compound. Indeed, the Obama White House used the bin Laden documents to portray al Qaeda and Iran as mortal enemies.

...bin Laden chastised one of his subordinates for openly threatening attacks inside Iran. He explained:

You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.

...bin Laden chastised one of his subordinates for openly threatening attacks inside Iran. He explained:

You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.

...Obama and his advisers saw the enemy they wanted to see, not the one they were actually fighting. They routinely ignored the first rule of warfare: The enemy gets a vote. There's no telling how many current intelligence assessments have Obama's misunderstandings baked into them. The Trump administration will have to correct and replace any Obama-style analyses that outlive his presidency.

There is no better place to start than by releasing Osama bin Laden's files. Al Qaeda is a more complex and sophisticated adversary than Obama believed. The American public deserves to know how the man who launched the 9/11 wars really saw the world.

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