Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wanted to assassinate President Barack Obama and other high-ranking U.S. leaders, according to documents obtained from the terror leader's secret hideout in Pakistan.Osama bin Laden expressed his desire to kill President Barack Obama and other senior U.S. officials in documents taken by Navy SEALs who killed the al-Qaeda leader at a hideout in Pakistan, a U.S. official said.
Bin Laden didn’t outline a specific plot in the documents, said the official, who lacks authority to speak publicly and requested anonymity. The U.S. official declined to mention the other targeted officials discussed in the documents.
Intelligence analysts are continuing to examine the trove of information seized by the SEALs during a raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was shot and killed.
The material included computer drives and bin Laden’s hand- written journal, U.S. officials have said.
In an e-mail, White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment.
ABC News reported earlier today on bin Laden’s intent to assassinate the president.
In the documents, bin Laden said he wanted to organize attacks with mass casualties and find ways to play U.S. politicians off one another, the U.S. official said.
In some documents, bin Laden questioned how many Americans would need to be killed before the U.S. removed troops from Muslim countries.
The portrait emerging from the documents shows that bin Laden was more involved in daily operations than U.S. national security leaders had suspected.
U.S. intelligence experts and other specialists from 10 government agencies are combing through the material and quantifying and cataloging the haul, which may produce more handwritten accounts, a second U.S. official said.
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