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Article 6.
Washington Post 10 years after 9/11, al-Qaeda 1s down but
not out David Ignatius
August 24 -- Government officials refer to it blandly as the “SSE,” or Sensitive Site Exploitation. That’s their oblique term for the extraordinary cache of evidence that was carried away from Osama bin Laden’s compound the night the al-Qaeda leader was killed.
With the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks a few weeks away, it’s possible to use this evidence to sketch a vivid portrait of al- Qaeda, drawing on material contained in more than 100 computer storage devices, including thumb drives, DVDs and CDs, and more than a dozen computers or hard drives — all collected during the May 2 raid.
U.S. officials say three strong themes emerge from their reading of the files, most of which were communications between bin Laden and his top deputy Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. Indeed, because the Libyan- born Atiyah (who’s known to analysts by his first name) was the boss’s key link with the outside, officials see him as more important than bin Laden’s nominal successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Here are the highlights:
e Bin Laden retained until his death a passion to launch a significant attack against the United States, ideally linked to the 10th anniversary of 9/11. He and Atiyah communicated often about who might carry out such a strike, with Atiyah proposing names and bin Laden rejecting them. Bin Laden was still looking for a history-changing attack on big, economically important targets — one that would
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