Osama bin Laden’s videos highlighted in CIA release

Mainstream fifilms, documentaries, porn in collection.

It’s impossible to know whether Osama bin Laden, sequestered in his Abbottabadhideout inPakistan, ever turned on the DVD player and popped in a documentary he could instantly factcheck: “Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?”

Bin Laden’s video-viewing habits were highlighted WednesdaybytheCIA, which releasedatroveofdocuments andmedia six years after the raid that killed the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But for every insight from the release, there are dozens of head-scratchers, starting with bin Laden’s movie collection.

Themanonce listedasNo. 1 on the FBI’s most-wanted listhadcollectedthekidmovies “Antz,” “Chicken Little” and “Cars.” In addition to the more serious documentary on the international terrorist, there were BBC and National Geographic documentaries, including“World’s Worst Venom,” “Inside the Green Berets” and “Kung Fu Killers.”

Accordingto theCIA, there were also documents and videos that give insight into al-Qaida’s internal fifissures anddisputesbetweenthe terrorist network and its allies.

Althoughtheexactpurpose of the more than 100,000 files died with bin Laden, they trackwith the common themes that emerged from the terrorist leader’s time in hiding.

Bin Laden had been a major player on the international stage. After the attacks, he was confifined mostly to a section of a 38,000-squarefootcompoundwithnointernet orphoneconnection, out ofpublic sight. Hewas aman who got bored, experts say, and occupied himself with mainstream movies, books by NoamChomsky and Bob Woodward, Netflflix-y documentaries and porn.

“When you study terrorist groups, that’s alwayswhat’s striking to people, the kind of quirky, human side of them,” Dan Byman, professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post. “Theirwhole life is not spent plotting aroundthe campfifire saying, ‘Howdo we infifiltrate America’s defense?’

“They’ll have lots of pornography, like men all over theworld. A lot of the documents arecomplainingabout bureaucracies. What’swrong withthefaxmachine. They’re involved in the same sort of organizational problems of bureaucracies that we all have. In some cases, a lot worse.”

ButbinLadendidappearto be doing his part to advance al-Qaida’s aims.

To anti-American terrorist groups, bin Laden was a sort of well-respected emeritus professor, Byman said. He was no longer actively involved in plots but was still trying to lend his intelligence and inflfluence to the organization he had helped form and then expanded — while trying to prevent their implosion.

And the ideological and practical divisions were metastasizing. As The Post’s GregMiller and Peter Finn reported on a previous release, the documents included “chilling admonitions to remain focused on killing Americans” and concerns that important goals were distracted by regional fifights.

“Our strength is limited,” binLadenwroteina2010letter that comparedtheUnited States toa treewithbranches that project across theworld, according toMiller andFinn. “So our best way to cut the tree is to concentrateonsawing the trunk.”

“This is a movement that historically has been highly divided,” Byman said. “One thing Osama has been doing is trying to be a unififier. He was very comfortable working with people who agreed with him on one issue and disagreed with him on fifififififive. Toward the end of his life, a lot of what he was trying to do was to get groups towork together.”

‘When you study terrorist groups, that’s always what’s striking to people, the kind of quirky, human side of them.’

Dan Byman Professor, Georgetown University