Osama Bin Laden 'plotted to kill Obama' before death Osama Bin Laden asked deputies to prepare an attack on Obama's presidential aircraft Continue reading the main story


Osama Bin Laden was plotting to kill US President Barack Obama, US media reports say.

The plans are said to be in papers found in the compound in Abbottabad where the al-Qaeda leader was killed by US special forces last year.

Bin Laden asked deputies to plan an attack against an aircraft carrying Mr Obama and General David Petraeus


The documents were seen by the Washington Post. There is growing anticipation in the US over government plans to publish all the papers seized at the compound when it was raided in May 2011.

Laptops, notepads and computer hard drives were also taken.

Bin Laden asked one of his deputies, Ilyas Kashmiri, to start preparing the attack.

Drone danger

"Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work," he wrote in a 48-page note.

The US media says intelligence officials believe it is unlikely that al-Qaeda had the capacity to launch such an attack in the US, and have not seen evidence of any preparations.

Kashmiri was killed in a US air attack a month after the death of Bin Laden.

In his 48-page note Bin Laden called on al-Qaeda operatives to move away from the Pakistani tribal areas because of the constant attacks by US remotely-controlled planes.

He also debated changing al-Qaeda's name, because US officials "have largely stopped using the phrase 'the war on terror' in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims", he said.



The Washington Post
By David Ignatius, Published: March 16


Before his death, Osama bin Laden boldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus.

“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency. . . . 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 . . . and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.

Administration officials said Friday that the Obama-Petraeus plot was never a serious threat.

The scheme is described in one of the documents taken from bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces on May 2, the night he was killed. I was given an exclusive look at some of these remarkable documents by a senior administration official. They have been declassified and will be available soon to the public in their original Arabic texts and translations.

The man bin Laden hoped would carry out the attacks on Obama and Petraeus was the Pakistani terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri. “Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work,” bin Laden wrote to his top lieutenant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. A month after bin Laden’s death, Kashmiri was killed in a U.S. drone attack.

The plot to target Obama was probably bluster, since al-Qaeda apparently lacked the weapons to shoot down U.S. aircraft. But it’s a chilling reminder that even when he was embattled and in hiding, bin Laden still dreamed of pulling off another spectacular terror attack against the United States.

The terrorist leader urged in a 48-page directive to Atiyah to focus “every effort that could be spent on attacks in America,” instead of operations within Muslim nations. He told Atiyah to “ask the brothers in all regions if they have a brother . . . who can operate in the U.S. [He should be able to] live there, or it should be easy for him to travel there.”

U.S. analysts don’t see evidence that these plots have materialized. “The organization lacks the ability to plan, organize and execute complex, catastrophic attacks, but the threat persists,” says a senior administration analyst who has carefully reviewed the documents.

The bin Laden who emerges from these communications is a terrorist CEO in an isolated compound, brooding that his organization has ruined its reputation by killing too many Muslims in its jihad against America. He writes of the many departed “brothers” who have been lost to U.S. drone attacks. But he’s far from the battlefield himself in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he seems to spend considerable time watching television.

The garbled syntax of bin Laden’s communications may result from their being dictated to several of his wives, according to the U.S. analyst. And his rambling laundry list of recommendations illustrates the problems of communicating with subordinates when it could take several months to receive an answer. The al-Qaeda leader had a “great fear of irrelevance,” the analyst believes.