newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ADELE SAMMARCO

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden set his sights on the leader in chief of the United States, President Barack Obama.

A year after the terror leader's demise, his inner most thoughts are revealed in at least 17 different letters that outline his bitter hatred toward the west and its people.

The man who reveled in the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. that killed thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001 revealed President Obama was high on bin Laden’s hit list.

The documents became declassified Thursday, one year after the elite Navy SEAL Team Six (ST6) valiantly stormed into bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and took out the government’s most wanted, most hated and most sought after criminal with a gunshot to the head.

In a chilling directive, bin Laden calls upon his deputies to set up assault teams in Pakistan and Afghanistan targeting Air Force One, which carries the President and his top military aids, including Commander General David Petraeus.

According to the documents, Bin Laden wrote, "The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency, as it is the norm over there."

The writings revealed the al Qaeda head did not have too much confidence in the leadership abilities of Vice President Joe Biden.

"Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour in this last year of the war, and killing him would alter the war's path," bin Laden wrote.

The documents were released by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, where law enforcement officials say it is as if bin Laden speaks from his watery grave, describing an increasingly frustrated and isolated shell of a man who was once so revered by his followers, struggling to maintain control over the terrorist organization he helped create.

The documents suggest bin Laden worried that his brainchild had descended into mismatched groups of rogue operations with no unifying principles.

According to a CTC analysis, his tone suggests he was "struggling to exercise even a minimal influence over" regional affiliates and had difficulty controlling his subordinates.

As far back as February 14, 2001, just six months before the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, bin Laden's cohorts took to the stand in the trial of Usama bin Laden in absentia vs. the United States of America for the 1998 simultaneous bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa, where hundreds of lives were lost.

During that trial 11 years ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's name surfaced as a possible mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and that bin Laden had made a "Declaration of Holy War" against all Americans to his followers, citing a "severe catastrophe awaits."

"One problem with running an organization of murderers and fanatics is they can be hard to control," said former CIA officer Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC.

He also showed he did not like his American-born terror colleague, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Bin Laden dismissed Anwar al-Awlaki as an al-Qaeda wannabe, propagandist who set up headquarters in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike last year and was dubbed by the Arab news network, Al Jezeera, as the "bin Laden of the internet."

But bin Laden wasn’t into social networking sites. Government sources say the terror leader was more into internet porn.

Sources say bin Laden dismissed any rivalry suggestions from his followers that al-Awlaki could take over the al-Qaeda network in Yemen.

However, the letters are only a fraction of the thousands of documents seized at his compound and do not hold any particular clues as to how bin Laden was able to hide in plain sight for years after the 9/11 attacks or whether the Pakistani government aided him in his concealment.

While it's clear bin Laden grappled to hold onto his leadership, he realized Muslims around the world are facing a tumultuous time and knew he was living on borrowed time the last days of his life.

Just days before the SEALs raided his compound in Abbottabad, just outside Islamabad, bin Laden wrote about the Arab spring and how it could be a "formidable" moment and turning point for the Muslim faithful.

At the time of his writings, Muslim leaders such as Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak had already fallen from power in Tunisia and Egypt.

"The fall of the remaining tyrants in the region was inevitable," bin Laden wrote in a letter dated April 25, 2011, according to the documents.

"If we double our efforts towards guiding, educating and warning Muslim people from those (who might tempt them to settle for) half solutions, by carefully presenting (our) advice, then the next phase will (witness a victory) for Islam, if God so pleases."