Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." This article was originally published in May, 2015.

(CNN) In his final years hiding in a compound in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden was a man who at once showed great love and interest in his own family while he coldly drew up quixotic plans for mass casualty attacks on Americans, according to documents seized by Navy SEALs the night he was killed.

The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released an unprecedented number of documents from what U.S. officials have described as the treasure-trove picked up by the SEALs at bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.

Totaling 103 documents, they include the largest repository of correspondence ever released between members of bin Laden's immediate family and significant communications between bin Laden and other leaders of al Qaeda as well as al Qaeda's communications with terrorist groups around the Muslim world.

Also released was a list of bin Laden's massive digital collection of English-language books, think tank reports and U.S. government documents, numbering 266 in total.

To the end bin Laden remained obsessed with attacking Americans. In an undated letter he told jihadist militants in North Africa that they should stop "insisting on the formation of an Islamic state" and instead attack U.S. embassies in Sierra Leone and Togo and American oil companies. Bin Laden offered similar advice to the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, telling it to avoid targeting Yemeni police and military targets and instead prioritize attacks on American targets.

Much of bin Laden's advice either didn't make it to these groups or was simply ignored because al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and North Africa continued to attack local targets.

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ISIS, of course, didn't exist at the time bin Laden was writing. The group, which now controls a large swath of territory in the Middle East, grew out of al Qaeda in Iraq and has charted a different path, seeking to create an Islamic state and not prioritizing attacks on the United States and its citizens.

Taken together, these documents and reading materials paint a complex, nuanced portrait of the world's most wanted man in the years before he was killed in the raid on his compound.

In the letters that bin Laden exchanged with his many sons and daughters, he emerges as a much-loved and admired father who doted on his children. And in a letter he sent to one of his wives, he even comes off as a lovelorn swain.

That's in sharp contrast to the letters bin Laden sent to al Qaeda leaders that demanded mass casualty attacks against American targets and insisted that al Qaeda affiliates in the Middle East stop wasting their time on attacks against local government targets. "The focus should be on killing and fighting the American people," bin Laden emphasized.

What bin Laden was reading

Bin Laden's digital library is that of an avid reader whose tastes ran from "Obama's Wars," Bob Woodward's account of how the Obama administration surged U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, to Noam Chomsky as well as someone who had a pronounced interest in how Western think tanks and academic institutions were analyzing al Qaeda.

Bin Laden was a meticulous editor, and some of the memos he wrote were revised as many as 50 times. Of the thousands of versions of documents recovered from computers and digital media that the SEALs retrieved at bin Laden's compound, the final tally numbers several hundred documents.

The new documents show how bin Laden reacted to the events of the Arab Spring, which was roiling the Middle East in the months before his death. While bin Laden had nothing to say publicly about the momentous events in the Middle East, privately he wrote lengthy memos analyzing what was happening, pointing to the "new factor" of "the information technology revolution" that had helped spur the revolutions and characterizing them as "the most important events" in the Muslim world "in centuries."

Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Osama bin Laden holds a Kalashnikov rifle in Tora Bora, a mountainous area of Afghanistan, in November 1996. This remarkable set of photos -- the first showing bin Laden in the remote hideout where he would seek refuge after 9/11 -- came to light only last month in the terrorism conspiracy trial of bin Laden lieutenant Khaled al-Fawwaz. Al-Fawwaz was a communications conduit for al Qaeda in London during the mid-1990s. Hide Caption 1 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden first went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to participate in the war against the Soviet Union. He co-founded al Qaeda with fighters from that conflict. Hide Caption 2 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden is seen inside his Tora Bora hideout, about to record an address.​ Starting in 1996, when he issued his first fatwa, or religious decree, to kill Americans, bin Laden began granting interviews to reporters to publicize his grievances against the United States and its allies. Hide Caption 3 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout When issuing pronouncements, bin Laden often sat in front of shelves of Islamic books to convey an intellectual image. Hide Caption 4 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden sits in front of his bookshelves inside his Tora Bora hideout. His three wives and more than a dozen children struggled with the sparse amenities. The only heat came from a wood-burning stove. Hide Caption 5 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden, a Saudi exile, took al Qaeda to Sudan for four years in the 1990s before returning to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 1996. Hide Caption 6 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout At Tora Bora, bin Laden was surrounded by bodyguards, loyal followers and family members. Hide Caption 7 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout In May 1996, bin Laden settled in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. His mountain fortress in Tora Bora was a long drive up a dirt road he had built. Hide Caption 8 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout In 1998, less than two years after this photo was taken, bin Laden followers bombed U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and injuring around 4,000. Hide Caption 9 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout The journey from Jalalabad to Tora Bora was a perilous and bumpy ride past armed checkpoints. In al Qaeda's vehicle of choice -- a Toyota pickup truck -- it was a three-hour trip. Hide Caption 10 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout The exterior of bin Laden's hideaway was made of mud and stone. Hide Caption 11 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout A secret passageway is seen at Tora Bora. Bin Laden told his sons that they must know their way out of the mountains in case of war. Hide Caption 12 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout A young man stands outside the house. Hide Caption 13 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout ​In Tora Bora, the living conditions were medieval. The only light at night was from the moon and gas lanterns. Hide Caption 14 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden had a two-bedroom house at Tora Bora. Hide Caption 15 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Hunger was a frequent companion to the bin Laden children, who lived on a diet of rice, bread, eggs and salty cheese. Hide Caption 16 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout In addition to bin Laden's wives and children, dozens of al Qaeda fighters also spent time with bin Laden in the mountainous retreat. Hide Caption 17 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden laughs during a walk. Hide Caption 18 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Abdel Barri Atwan, a Palestinian journalist whose 1996 journey to Afghanistan yielded these photos, said bin Laden told him he hated Americans and American policies and troop deployments in the Middle East. Hide Caption 19 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout The Tora Bora settlement and cave complex was above the snow line in winter. Hide Caption 20 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden discovered Tora Bora during the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s. Hide Caption 21 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout A view of the lake outside Tora Bora. Hide Caption 22 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Syrian-born ideologue Abu Musab al-Suri was an ally in jihad with bin Laden who once ran training camps inside Afghanistan. Hide Caption 23 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout From left, inside bin Laden's cave, are al-Suri, bin Laden and British documentary maker Gwynne Roberts. Hide Caption 24 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Al-Suri was a bin Laden supporter in the 1990s​ who later became a critic of al Qaeda's hierarchical and bureaucratic structure. Hide Caption 25 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Al-Suri advocated a "leaderless jihad" with "spontaneous operations" performed by unconnected individuals and cells all over the world. Hide Caption 26 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Al-Suri, seen here taking photos, published "The Call for Global Islamic Resistance" on the Internet in 2004, saying there need not be any organizational bonds between "resistance fighters." Hide Caption 27 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout More than 200 al Qaeda fighters were killed in the December 2001 battle of Tora Bora, and more than 50 were captured. Bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri escaped. Hide Caption 28 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Al-Suri, left, with Atwan. Atwan was the founding editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an independent Arabic weekly published in London that had been critical of certain Arab regimes and the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He nabbed the first interview in Afghanistan with bin Laden on this 1996 trip. Hide Caption 29 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden took journalist Atwan on a two-hour hike around Tora Bora. "He loved that nature there. He loved the mountain. They were trying to have their own community, grow their foods," Atwan recalled. Al-Suri was arrested in Pakistan in 2005 and sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned. Hide Caption 30 of 31 Photos: Osama bin Laden's Afghan hideout Bin Laden hikes alone at the base of a mountain. As U.S. troops closed in on Tora Bora in late 2001, bin Laden escaped. A decade later, U.S. Navy SEALs killed him at his next hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Hide Caption 31 of 31

Some of the documents paint an organization that understood it was under significant pressure from U.S. counterterrorism operations. One undated document explained that CIA drone attacks "led to the killing of many jihadi cadres, leaders and others," and noted, "(T)his is something that is concerning us and exhausting us." Several documents mention the need to be careful with operational security and to encrypt communications and also the necessity of making trips around the Afghan-Pakistan border regions only on "cloudy days" when American drones were less effective.

Al Qaeda members knew they were short on cash, with one writing to bin Laden, "Also, there is the financial problem."

Some of the documents have nothing to do with terrorism. One lengthy memo from bin Laden worried about the baleful effects of climate change on the Muslim world and advocated not depleting precious groundwater stocks. Sounding more like a World Bank official than the leader of a major terrorist organization, bin Laden fretted about "food security." He also gave elaborate instructions to an aide about the most efficacious manner to store wheat.

Family concerns

Many of the documents concern bin Laden's sprawling family, which included his four wives and 20 children. Bin Laden took a minute interest in the marriage plans of his son Khalid to the daughter of a "martyred" al Qaeda commander, and he exchanged a number of letters with the mother of the bride-to-be. Bin Laden excitedly described the impending nuptials, "which our hearts have been looking forward to."

Bin Laden corresponded at length with his son Hamza and also with Hamza's mother, Khairiah, who had spent around a decade in Iran under a form of house arrest following the Taliban's fall in neighboring Afghanistan during the winter of 2001.

Hamza wrote a heartfelt letter to bin Laden in 2009 in which he recalled how he hadn't seen his father since he was 13, eight years earlier: "My heart is sad from the long separation, yearning to meet with you. ... My eyes still remember the last time I saw you when you were under the olive tree and you gave each one of us Muslim prayer beads."

In 2010 the Iranians started releasing members of the bin Laden family who had been living in Iran. Bin Laden spent many hours writing letters to them and to his associates in al Qaeda about how best he could reunite with them.

Bin Laden watches TV at his Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound in a frame grab from an undated video from the Pentagon.

In a letter to his wife Khairiah, he wrote tenderly, "(H)ow long have I waited for your departure from Iran."

Bin Laden was paranoid that the Iranians -- who he said were "not to be trusted" -- might insert electronic tracking devices into the belongings or even the bodies of his family as they departed Iran. He told Khairiah that if she had recently visited an "official dentist" in Iran for a filling that she would need to have the filling taken out before meeting with him as he worried a tracking device might have been inserted inside.

U.S. intelligence officials have a theory that bin Laden might have been grooming Hamza eventually to succeed him at the helm of al Qaeda because the son's relative youth would energize al Qaeda's base. But Hamza never made it to his father's hiding place in Abbottabad. When the SEALs raided bin Laden's compound, they assumed Hamza would likely be one of the adult males living there, but he wasn't.

U.S. intelligence officials say they don't know where Hamza, now in his late 20s, is today.

'In case you became a martyr'

As is typical for any bureaucratic organization there was considerable discussion in the documents about which al Qaeda personnel might be suitable for promotion and also documentation of cash flows moving in and out of the organization, in amounts in the tens of thousands of euros.

There is even an al Qaeda application form that included standard questions such as what "hobbies" the applicant might have, but also less standard ones such as, "Who should we contact in case you became a martyr?"

Under pressure from bin Laden, leaders of al Qaeda in Yemen noodled with the idea that they might negotiate some kind of truce with the Yemeni government so the group could focus exclusively on attacking American targets. It's not clear if anything came of this.

Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound Osama bin Laden was killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011, at a compound near Abbottabad, Pakistan. Click through to see images of the compound where he spent the last days of his life. Hide Caption 1 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound The compound where Osama bin Laden was killed is guarded by Pakistani police on May 4, 2011. Hide Caption 2 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound A closer view of one of the buildings in the compound is seen on May 7, 2011. Hide Caption 3 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound A general view of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is seen on May 5, 2011. Hide Caption 4 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound A demolition crew works to dismantle the compound on February 26, 2012. Hide Caption 5 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound A Pakistani woman fills a container with water at the site of the demolished compound on April 25, 2012. Hide Caption 6 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound Shakeel Ahmad Yusufzai, a Pakistani contractor who worked to dismantle the compound, walks through the rubble left behind from the demolition on May 1, 2012. Hide Caption 7 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound Contractor Yusufzai looks at a bathtub left over from the demolition on May 1, 2012. Hide Caption 8 of 9 Photos: Osama bin Laden's compound Children play cricket near the site of the demolished compound. Hide Caption 9 of 9

Similarly, al Qaeda members reached out to leaders of the Pakistani Taliban who maintain contacts with Pakistan's military intelligence service, ISI, to see if they could negotiate a similar truce with the Pakistani government. The deal would be that the Pakistanis would leave al Qaeda alone and vice versa and then al Qaeda would be able to focus on attacking American targets. However, the al Qaeda leader who was leading this effort told bin Laden, "As you know, this is just talk!" and nothing came of these discussions.

There is no evidence in the newly released documents that the Pakistanis had any idea bin Laden was living in Pakistan or indeed he was even alive.

The new documents also do nothing to substantiate investigative journalist's Seymour Hersh's recent well-publicized claims that the raid that killed bin Laden was not a firefight in which the SEALs went into a dangerous and unknown situation, but a setup in which Pakistan's military had been holding bin Laden prisoner in Abbottabad for five years and simply made him available to the SEALs when they flew in helicopters to the compound on the night of the raid.

On the first anniversary of bin Laden's death in May 2012, the Obama administration released a first tranche of 17 documents from the treasure-trove. Those documents also underlined how much al Qaeda feared the CIA drone campaign as well as bin Laden's obsessive interest in attacking the United States.

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Hersh seems to believe that any documents released by the Obama administration that were discovered during the bin Laden raid have been faked by the CIA. Readers can judge for themselves by examining the English-language translations of the new documents and also the original Arabic documents here

According to U.S. intelligence officials, in October seven U.S. intelligence agencies began the process of clearing for public release the documents that came out Wednesday.

Digital library

Among the most interesting windows in to the mind of al Qaeda's leader are the contents of his massive digital library, which was painstakingly assembled. Because of security concerns, bin Laden's compound had no connection to the Internet so any books or reports that bin Laden had an interest in were assembled painstakingly by making PDFs of each page. They were then put on to a thumb drive and delivered to bin Laden by one of his two bodyguards, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Strangely, one of the books in bin Laden's digital library was a suicide prevention manual. Senior U.S. intelligence officials do not believe that bin Laden was suicidal.

Bin Laden was interested in books with a conspiratorial bent, and he had tomes about the Illuminati and the Freemasons and even, somewhat ironically, a book that asserted 9/11 was an "inside job."

Bin Laden also collected reports by leading American counterterrorism exports such as Bruce Hoffman and Paul Pillar as well as papers about al Qaeda by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, RAND Corp. and the Congressional Research Service. (He even possessed congressional testimony by this author titled, "Reassessing the Evolving al Qaeda threat to the Homeland.")

Bin Laden collected indictments from American terrorism cases that he found of interest, such as that of David Coleman Headley from Chicago, who al Qaeda had tasked to plan an attack against a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

During the almost six years bin Laden lived in the Abbottabad compound, he had a great deal of time on his hands, which was partly consumed by reading the many holdings in his digital library and also composing the memos and letters that are now becoming public.

Bin Laden was deeply aware that as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approached his central goal of attacking the United States again had failed. Many of the documents reference his plans for some kind of major public statement to mark the anniversary. Bin Laden was killed three months before he could deliver this statement.