Bin Laden's bookshelf: The al Qaeda leader had articles on 9/11 conspiracy theories along with left-wing liberal works by Noam Chomsky at his Pakistan compound

A newly-released list of Osama bin Laden's 'bookshelf' has revealed the al Qaeda leader was obsessed with 9/11 conspiracy theories and U.S. military strategy along with dabbling in works about the Illuminati bloodlines and magic.

The titles of hundreds of books, journals and newspaper articles recovered during the raid on bin Laden's Pakistani compound were published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Wednesday.

Dozens of letters written by bin Laden to his family and senior members of al Qaeda were also released.

Works by left-wing liberals Noam Chomsky and Michael Scheuer were recovered from the bin Laden home along with the Oxford History of Modern War and Bloodlines of the Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier.

The 9/11 mastermind was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six.

Jeff Anchukaitis, spokesman for the US Director of National Intelligence's office, said the release of 'a sizeable tranche of documents recovered during the raid' was in keeping with President Obama's call for 'increased transparency'.

The glut of intelligence information also comes just a week after the White House was forced to deny that Pakistan had been told in advance about the 2011 U.S. special ops raid that led to bin Laden's death.

Veteran U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in a British publication earlier this month that Pakistan's security services not only knew about the raid, but had been holding bin Laden prisoner since 2006.

That account was rejected by the White House.

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Part of a letter titled 'Verbally released doc for Naseer trial' recovered during the 2011 raid on al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan (left) and right, a decorative document titled 'A Letter to the Sunnah people in Syria'

As part of the National Intelligence agency release today, a total of 39 English language books were listed on a broad range of subjects - from a Handbook of International Law to an encyclopedic work on mystical religions called The Secret Teachings of All Ages.

Bin Laden also had the work of 9/11 conspiracy theorists including the saved, single web page of an article titled, 'Website Claims Steve Jackson Games Foretold 9/11'.

Many of the titles on bin Laden's shelves related to America's role as a military superpower in the modern world.

'Unfinished Business, U.S. Overseas Military Presence in the 21st Century' by Michael O'Hanlon was found along with 'Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower' by William Blum; and New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin.

He appeared not only fixated on George W Bush's tactics post-9/11 but also with President Obama's role.

A copy of investigative journalist, Bob Woodward's work, Obama's Wars, was found in the terrorist den.

Left-wing liberal works by renowned thinker Noam Chomsky were found (left) along with a book titled 'Bloodlines of the Iluminati', according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

He also had 75 publicly available U.S. government documents focusing on al Qaeda, the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Global War on Terror Operations since 9/11 and reports on nuclear energy in Syria and Iran.

'Who should we contact in case you become a martyr?': Al Qaeda job application form revealed in trove of documents Al-Qaeda's job application form was among the trove of declassified documents on Wednesday. 'Please enter the required information accurately and truthfully. Write clearly and legibly. Name, age, marital status. Do you wish to execute a suicide operation? Al-Qaeda's application form starts like that of any large enterprise, but leads recruits quickly to a darker place: 'Who should we contact in case you become a martyr?' Recruiting a global jihadist network is a tricky job, especially if you are holed up in a Pakistani compound sheltering from U.S. drones. But that is no reason not to be methodical, as the detailed militant recruitment form bearing the watermark of 'The Security Committee, Al-Qaeda Organization' shows. The document was among intelligence materials seized by US commandos on May 2, 2011 after they stormed Bin Laden's hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad and shot him dead. Advertisement

Bin Laden had in his possession U.S. State Department Forms for the 'Application for Passport by Mail'.

The terrorist also kept up with the U.S. media and had a stash of materials including a 2007 issue of Business Week, multiple print issues of Foreign Policy and a Los Angeles Times' article from 2005 entitled 'Is al-Qaeda Just Bush's Boogeyman?'

There were a number of religious titles other than the Koran including several works about Islam, Muhammad and an article by Dr Muhammad Ismail with the title 'The Hijab... Why?'

Profiles of bishops in the Church of England were also reportedly found.

When U.S. intelligence caught up with bin Laden in 2011, he was living secretly in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, communicating with his network by courier.

Also among the information released by the U.S. government were 103 items of now declassified material written by bin Laden, allowing an insight into his final years.

His last years at his final hideout were haunted by his accurate hunch that he was hunted by a remorseless and technologically advanced foe.

As he tried to gather his family around him in his Abbottabad compound, he issued ever more detailed instructions as to how they were to avoid leading U.S. agents to him.

SECURITY THREATS AND FEARS OF MICROSCOPIC BUGS

According to one letter that was declassified on Wednesday, bin Laden reportedly warned one of his wives travelling from Iran to rejoin him to take special care.

'Before Um Hamza arrives here, it is necessary for her to leave everything behind, including clothes, books, everything that she had in Iran... Everything that a needle might possibly penetrate,' Bin Laden wrote, in a letter dated September 26, 2010.

'Some chips have been lately developed for eavesdropping, so small they could easily be hidden inside a syringe,' he said, according to the CIA's own translation.

Bin Laden watches television in an undated picture at his Abbottabad, Pakistan compound, with a book visible in the TV cabinet. Following the Teal Seam Six raid, dozens of books were found at the home on a range of subjects from 9/11 conspiracy theories to left-wing liberal thinking

'Since the Iranians are not to be trusted, it is possible to implant a chip in some of the belongings that you might have brought along with you.'

The letter was one of scores seized along with other intelligence materials when Navy SEALs stormed the compound on May 2, 2011 and shot bin Laden dead, the end of a long hunt for an elusive foe.

Bin Laden's Saudi wife Khairiah Sabar - known by the honorific Um Hamza as the mother of the al-Qaeda's leader's favorite son - was eagerly awaited, but security was total.

Nevertheless, she was one of three bin Laden wives present when SEALs stormed the house. She was left behind and later arrested by the Pakistani authorities.

In other letters, bin Laden tried to explain to his sometimes reluctant lieutenants why security is paramount, even when it makes running a global jihadist operation harder.

'Concerning using the Internet for correspondence, it is OK for general messages, but the secrecy of the mujahideen does not allow its usage, and couriers are the only way,' he wrote.

This did not go down well with his right hand man, Atiyah Abd al Rahman, a commander known in Al-Qaeda as Mahmud.

Bin Laden's problem with ISIS Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, which would later morph into the Islamic State group - and which now increasingly overshadows al Qaeda - also comes up in the documents. Bin Laden and his then deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, receive a scathing rebuke in a letter from some Iraqi supporters, who demand they denounce the bloodletting in Iraq. The Jihad and Reform Front warns bin Laden that God will hold him to account 'for blessing the work done by the Al-Qaeda in Iraq organization without disavowing the scandals that are committed in your name.' 'If you still can, then this is your last chance to remedy the Jihad breakdown that is about to take place in Iraq, that is mostly caused by your followers,' said the letter dated May 22, 2007. Bin Laden writes of the need for large-scale terror operations, even though some of his deputies are finding it difficult to organize massive attacks as they try to avert drones overhead and US eavesdropping. One document recently declassified in a terrorism trial in New York but not released on Wednesday quotes Abu Musab al-Suri, an Al-Qaeda veteran, who advocates going after smaller targets of opportunity as a more realistic approach, intelligence officials said. 'Bin Laden at the time of his death remained focused on large-scale operations while other al-Qaeda leaders believed smaller operations, or inciting lone terrorist attacks, could succeed at bleeding the West economically,' the intelligence analyst said. Bin Laden failed to win the argument. After his death, al Qaeda's leadership called for lone-wolf attacks, and Suri's idea of 'individual jihad' has won out. The IS group, which was officially excommunicated from al Qaeda, now controls vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and its online propaganda has been blamed for inspiring attacks from Paris to the Dallas suburbs. Advertisement

'The issue is highly complicated. How can we correspond with brothers in Algeria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia?' he demanded in one letter, pushing to use online communication.

'Sometimes there is no other means after taking precautions. As for Iraq, we will try, but it is too difficult.'

But Bin Laden was implacable on the subject.

Reportedly, it was by tracking one of Bin Laden's couriers to Abbottabad that the CIA was eventually able to pinpoint his location - there was no electronic communication from the house.

'PAY ATTENTION TO TEETH CLEANING AND HOW TO AVOID DRONES'

But al-Qaeda's security policies extended even further, according to the declassified letters, translated by the U.S. government.

'Our security situation here does not allow us to go to doctors, so please take care of all your medical needs, particularly your teeth, and keep the prescriptions from every doctor you go to so we can get the medication when you come to us,' he wrote.

And he also warned his mainly Arab allies: 'It is also of extreme importance, security-wise, to learn Urdu.'

Bin Laden also recommended telephone SIM cards be regularly destroyed and replaced, declaring with misplaced confidence 'the facts show that American technology and advanced systems cannot capture a mujahid if he does not make a security violation'.

As a reminder, one of the declassified documents is a list of al-Qaeda cadres who were killed or captured in the wake of the 2001 collapse of Afghanistan's Taliban regime.

Next to each name is the error that spelled their doom: One group was bombed after using a satellite phone, another had associated with known Pakistani agents, others gathered too many vehicles in one place even when a US AC-130 Spectre gunship was overhead.

As surviving al-Qaeda members regrouped in Pakistan, the U.S. weapon of choice against them was the drone. The only defense the militants could think of was a cloudy sky.

Thus, in a letter dated November 24, 2010, Mahmud reassures bin Laden that his wife won't set off on the road until a 'convenient cloudy day'.

Ironically, all his precautions would come to naught: Mahmud himself died in a drone strike in August 2011, three months after his cautious leader's demise.

BIN LADEN: DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES

Much of the material translated by the CIA, such as bin Laden's letters to family members and drafts of speeches never delivered, is poetic or personal.

But al-Qaeda's internal planning memos paint a picture of the jihadist leader operating almost as the director of human resources at a struggling multinational.

Any person we notice who displays boredom, does not finish the tasks assigned to him and gets mad quickly, we have to remove him from external work. Al Qaeda memo on jihadist recruits

'One of the specialties we need that we should not overlook is the science of administration,' reads one lengthy memo, calling for a professional training program.

The document calls for motivated young volunteers with deep religious convictions, but also with qualifications in science, engineering and office management.

Bin Laden called for select individuals to be trained at al-Qaeda safe houses in Pakistan over a period of months before being sent to launch attacks in the West.

'A person has to be pious and patient,' a planning memo insists, paying tribute to the discretion of the operatives who carried out the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi.

A letter titled 'Ideas as discussion with the sons of the Peninsula' recovered during the raid

'Any person we notice who displays boredom, does not finish the tasks assigned to him and gets mad quickly, we have to remove him from external work. In Kenya the brothers stayed inside the house for nine months.'

Bin Laden says he does not need to know the details of the 'external work' - al-Qaeda's term for attacks on Western targets outside the battlefield - for security reasons.

'But when the external work was delayed, I found myself forced to contribute to the matter,' he complains, in one of several mentions of his own secrecy concerns.

But things don't always go according to plan.

In another document that CIA analysts believe was written either by bin Laden or a senior Al-Qaeda operational leader, the group warns that some recruits are deploying too soon.

'The other brothers are new and we rushed to send them very quickly, before their security was exposed or their residency documents expired,' it says.

It cites the example of a volunteer who was only able to stay for two months because he needed to return to the West.

'We gave him an academic explosives course and he travelled back before his residency expired and we have not heard from him since he left,' it says.

'We hope that we hear from him very soon.'

The undated memo holds out hope that groups sent to Britain and Russia might yet be able to mount attacks, but worries that a three-man squad sent to Denmark had been arrested.

'WE WILL SEND SOME BROTHERS WHO ARE BRIGHT... TO STUDY AT UNIVERSITIES': AL QAEDA'S FUTURE PLANNING DEPARTMENT

The bind Al-Qaeda found itself in was that its experienced jihadists, battle-hardened in Afghanistan, were often known to enemy intelligence agencies and lacked travel papers.

Young recruits with the skills and documents to infiltrate the West lacked the patience and training for the war ahead.

Bin Laden's answer is couched in surprisingly managerial language: 'We need a development and planning department.'

Al-Qaeda planned to deputize a key lieutenant to pool jihadist research and best practices at a center of excellence, to ensure that the new wave of attackers are effective.

'We will send some of the brothers who are bright ... to study at universities,' the memo says, promising to create a generation of mujahideen computer engineers, business administrators and political scientists.

Chemists, of course, are in demand, 'for manufacturing explosives, which is something we have a dire need for'.

But media and communications specialists are also important as Bin Laden planned a public relations campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks - a date he did not live to see.

THE HEIR APPARENT: BIN LADEN'S FAVORITE SON

Letters also revealed that bin Laden was grooming his 22-year-old would-be-jihadist son to take over al-Qaeda, according to senior intelligence officials.

Hamza reportedly wrote to his father to say he was itching to join the fight. He was trained with explosives and embraced the terror network that killed 3,000 Americans in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Two letters to Bin Laden from his son and one from Hamza's mother imploring that he follow in his 'father's footsteps' were part of the new information divulged.

They included Al-Qaeda correspondence noting the eagerness of Hamza, believed to have engaged in terror raids when he was a teen and propaganda videos at a younger age, to return to his father's inner circle.

Speculation still swirls about where Hamza, dubbed the 'crown prince of terror' by a British politician, was on the night his father died, and no proof has emerged that he was at the compound.

He has not appeared publicly or made any public video statements in years, and his whereabouts remain a mystery, senior U.S. intelligence officials said.

But the documents depict a son describing himself as 'forged in steel,' ready to join his father on a journey to 'victory or martyrdom,' and a concerted effort by Al-Qaeda to smuggle the young man to his father's hideout.

'What truly makes me sad is the mujahidin legions have marched and I have not joined them,' Hamza wrote bin Laden in an eloquent letter in July 2009, when the son was under house arrest in Iran, according to an English translation provided by the CIA.

'I dread spending the rest of my young adulthood behind iron bars,' he added.

'My beloved father, I announce to you that I and everyone, God be praised, are following on the same path, the path of jihad.'

President Obama, VP Joe Biden, along with with members of the national security team and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in 2011