I'm Peter Bergen, I run the international security program here. It's my distinct honor and privilege to introduce our guest, Nellie Lahoud, who is a senior fellow here at New America. Nellie has just published a paper about the contested relationship between Iran and Al-Qaeda, which she's going to preview with you right now. She was the lead author, you may recall that when the Abadabad documents were released for the first time by the Obama administration, Nellie and a group of people at West Point were given the documents by the Obama administration and Nellie was the lead author on a paper that West Point published from the counterterrorism center at West Point, which really unpacked a lot of the material that was in the first tranche of releases. Now as you know in January the Trump administration released all 470,000 documents, it's a little bit of a misleading figure I think because many of those documents are multiple versions of the same document, bin Laden would draft something 50 times and a lot of those documents are really actually newspaper articles. Anyway, so over to Nellie, she will talk about the key findings of the paper and then we'll have a discussion with her. Many thanks Peter for this kind introduction and of course thanks to you for all the wonderful and constructive suggestions that you made on the paper and a special thanks to David Sturman who's ruthless but very constructive feedback and fact checking were really improved the paper. And of course thank you all today for your interest. Now my presentation consists of three parts. I'm going to start by briefly noting the uniqueness of the declassified documents recovered by U.S. Special Forces and Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad and upon which their study is based. The second part I'm going to allow the documents to tell the story of this contested relationship between al-Qaeda and Iran and this will include why some jihadis decided to flee to Iran following the fall of the Taliban regime, how al-Qaeda smuggled personnel and money through Iran, when Iran first reached out to al-Qaeda seeking to connect with bin Laden and why, and bin Laden's unfiltered views about Iran as he communicated them in his letters to his wife Umhamza and later with other members of his family in Abbottabad during the weeks before he was killed. And then I promise the concluding section will be very, very brief. Now starting with the uniqueness of the Abbottabad documents. Now this audience is well aware that al-Qaeda ties to state actors is a recurring theme in the counter-terrorism community Iran but also Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have all been accused of enabling al-Qaeda to advance their respective interest. Currently the story of al-Qaeda's ties to these states is told either through the accusatory lens of those who believe that these states have conspired to enable al-Qaeda or through the defensive lens of each of these states including Iranian officials accusing Saudi Arabia and vice versa when Saudi officials accuse Iran. In recent months Iran has come under particular scrutiny as a result of debates surrounding the Iran deal or the JCPOA. When President Trump announced earlier this year in May that the Iran deal must be either renegotiated or terminated he referenced in his statement Iran's support for al-Qaeda. The missing voice in this story is that of al-Qaeda and this is where this report comes in. Now we've heard al-Qaeda's leaders criticize Iran in some of their public statements but the reason the Abbottabad documents examined in this study are unique is because they were never intended to be for public consumption. Instead they consist of internal correspondence among al-Qaeda's leaders, their families and jihadis in their orbit. As such a close examination of the Arabic documents provides a non-paralleled window into al-Qaeda's inner workings and allow us to avoid much of the challenge of politicization that occurs when discussion of Iran's relationship to al-Qaeda is based on commentaries by Iran's rivals. Since 2012 the intelligence community has been declassifying these documents and as Peter noted first through the combating terrorism center at West Point then on the website of the office of the director of national intelligence and in November last year the CIA declassified most of what was recovered during the raid nearly according to the website 470,000 items of these over 24,000 RFI's in PDF format and as Peter noted not all of these are internal correspondence. Now the CIA did not provide translation for the newly declassified documents it released. The office of the DNI had done so for the previous ones. The quality of the translation varies sometimes it is incomplete. For the purpose of this study I read nearly 300 internal communicates. The lengths of these vary from one page to over 200 pages. My analysis is based on the original Arabic and the parts that I cite are my own translation. The dates of the internal communicates that reference Iran and that I cite in this study range from 2004 through Sunday evening first of May 2011 hours before bin Laden was killed. So let me turn to the second section, the second part of my presentation which is really the juicy part about the documents. When I was reading the documents I was particularly interested to see if al-Qaeda collaborated with Iran with the express purpose of carrying out international terrorism. This I did not find. Instead I found numerous hostile references towards Iran but the documents allowed me to get a sense as to why al-Qaeda wanted to avoid the confrontation with Iran and disown a pragmatism that allowed it to manage and even suppress this hostility. One of the documents declassified by the CIA November last year is a valuable anonymized 19 page document dated January 2007 and it stands out for providing an internal description of al-Qaeda members and shihadis in Iran and how the Iranian government dealt with them. This document was highlighted by analysts writing for the long war journal who were given advance copy of many of the files by the CIA but they didn't give it the analysis that it deserves. The study published today gives a detailed textual analysis of this 19 page document. Judging by the content it appears that just as the United States found the presence of some al-Qaeda members in Iran to be objectionable some shihadi leaders were similarly disturbed. In view of al-Qaeda's public enmity of Iran some shihadi sheikhs seem to have asked fellow shihadis to explain themselves. The 19 page document is intended to explain what happened. My guess is that the author is an al-Qaeda operative it is written by a shihadi for senior shihadis and the author explicitly instructs his readers to treat his report with utmost secrecy. Early in the report we get to sense the author's hostility towards Iran when he asserts that while the United States is the current enemy of the shihadis the Iranians are the postponed enemy. According to the document shihadis headed to Iran out of necessity and the relationship they sought with Iran was limited to allowing shihadis either to pass through Iran or to reside there temporarily. The first wave of shihadis to enter Iran was led by Abu Hafs al-Muritani. You may recall that Abu Hafs al-Muritani was al-Qaeda's the head of al-Qaeda's legal committee and he later claimed that he left al-Qaeda because he disagreed with the 9-11 plans. Now we find out from the document that al-Muritani had the authorization of Qiyadat al-Azma the crisis leadership to reach an understanding with the Iranians permitting shihadis to pass through Iran or to reside there. This authorization did not come from bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri the author remarks that no contact had been made with these two leaders after the Battle of Torobora. So by the time this author of the 19-page document was writing in January 2007 he tells us that the shi hadi experience in Iran had progressed through three different phases. The first phase began in late 2011 following the fall of the Taliban regime and lasted for a few months until early 2002. During this phase Iranian authorities provided safe passage for shihadis and their families who were allowed to reside temporarily particularly in the city of Zahedan and al-Muritani with the support of Iranian authorities was able to process the safe passage of many of the shi hadis particularly from the Arabian Peninsula that is Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states managing to send them off to their home countries or to other countries like Syria. The Saudi embassy in Tehran was involved in this endeavor. In return Iranian authorities demanded that shi hadis comply with security conditions that they set. Among these he indicates that shi hadis were forbidden to communicate by phone and I'm quoting refrain from any activities movements or form assemblies that would attract attention and of course. Now if Iranian authorities did indeed set these conditions then one can surmise that Iran did not wish for shi hadis who entered Iran to be operational. The author laments that the shi hadis did not keep their end of the bargain. They used mobile phones, purchased cars, formed groupings and in a short period they set up guest houses and on a number of occasions he adds they went outside the Zahedan and they set up special telecommunications antennas and established I'm quoting direct contact with the brothers in Cheshire. Following the shi hadis violation of the time set by the authorities everything changed the author wrote and a second phase ensued lasting from early 2002 until around March 2003 around the US led Iraq war. Now it's helpful to remember that the onset of the second phase coincided with Iran being positioned as part of the axis of evil by the US administration. The author claims that Iranian authorities launched a campaign to arrest members of al-Qaeda and other groups without exception telling them and I'm quoting Americans had taped many of your communications they brought it to us protested that we are giving refuge to terrorists. The crackdown caused shi hadis to flee the group of Iranian authorities and spread across different Iranian cities including Tehran where the author himself and others headed Isfahan, Mashhad and Bandar Abbas. Now how did the shi hadis settle in these different cities? Let me quote what the author precisely put it. Everyone began to rent houses through trusted Ahla Sunnah brothers, Sunnis. Many of them may God reward them rushed to help their shi hadis brothers urged by the righteous scholars and sheikhs who are loyal to and supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. So each group of shi hadis was assisted by a few Kurdish or Sunni Belushi brothers who worked with them to rent houses for families and bachelors alike. In many instances the brothers forged documents and used fake IDs to rent houses. This is a simple matter in Iran and the quotation. The shi hadis from Gulf countries who were arrested appear to have fed better than most since most of them were able to leave either on their own or by contacting their embassies in Tehran or the Iranian authorities sent them off to their home countries. So during the first and second phases Iran seems to have prioritized processing the nationals of Gulf countries. The Iranian authorities changed their policies with respect to shi hadis yet again. The third phase began around the time of the Iraq war. So we are told that as of March 2003 when Iranian authorities arrested shi hadis they did not permit them to leave Iran instead they imprisoned them. They were put in residential buildings guarded with security, women whose husbands were imprisoned were placed in two special houses without security guards. It seems that family visits were allowed and on some of these visits some brothers managed to escape. As to those who were not captured by Iranian authorities the author tells his readers that they adopted stringent measures to evade getting arrested. They spread across different parts of the country and they refrained from meeting or sharing one another's addresses. They also avoided the use of mobile phones, minimized their internet use and limited their interactions with the Sunnis of Iran. It seems that actually the authorities were tracking the Sunnis of Iran in order to get to the shi hadis. So what caused the Iranian authorities to shift their policy from deporting shi hadis to imprison them, let me quote the author here. We have come to ascertain without any doubt that with the American invasion of Iraq, the fall of Saddam, the beginning of shi hadis and resistance there, the salient and rapid rise of al-Zarkawi, the emergence of the name of al-Qaeda and the rapid unfolding of events, Iranian authorities decided to keep our brothers as a bargaining chip and a quotation. So what is the shi hadis leadership of Iran? And here the author reiterates a line common in the Yabba-Tawad documents which says again I'm quoting him to remain operationally quiet in Iran, not causing any incidents given that it serves as a passageway for our brothers into Afghanistan, an arena of support for movement and logistics, notwithstanding that this is all being conducted in a clandestine fashion and that its value has recently diminished, end of quotation. In other words, when al-Qaeda used Iranian territories to smuggle money and personnel, they were doing so without the knowledge or support of Iranian authorities. Other Yabba-Tawad documents further attest to this and none of the documents that I examined suggest that Iran was the source of funds or that it was facilitating the smuggling of personnel. Now you might ask how al-Qaeda was able to do this. So there is another anonymized document that gives us a glimpse of how this occurred. It was composed either late 2004 or early 2005 and it consists of 15 instructions, most of which were to be carried out by al-Qaeda operatives. Several references in the document allude to Iran as the known source but without explicitly mentioning Iran. One of the instructions to an operative, Abdullah al-Halabi, who could be bin Laden's brother-in-law but I'm not sure, who was entrusted with secrets concerning the jihadist work and who may be sent on mission to Iran is required, and I'm quoting, prepare himself and read the study by Abdul-Aziz al-Jarbuwa, a study about the legality of committing suicide for fear of disclosing secrets. He should take a small and simple tool that would assist him to commit suicide to avert falling captive should he find himself in an extremely dangerous situation. End of quote. In other words, al-Qaeda's use of Iranian territories to smuggle money and personnel was considered to be highly dangerous and it wanted to avoid at all costs having its secrets known by Iran. Now let me turn to a two page letter which was declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and in my view it's the most important document that I've come across in the collection in that it suggests that Iran reached out to al-Qaeda in 2004. While I do not wish to diminish the work of the intelligence community that analyzed the documents, I doubt that the information in this letter was exploited to its fullest. To start with, the letter was released and most likely treated as two separate documents. One page, the second one, was declassified in May 2015 and the other opening page was declassified in March 2016. The inconsistent translation of the same key words, al-Amda in al-Marda, and I'll say it more later, used on both pages of the same Arabic letter suggested the same Arabic two page letter was translated and analyzed by two individuals who did not make the connection between the two pages. The word al-Amda, chief or mayor as translated, was code for word for bin Laden while al-Marda, the Sikh people, was code for bin Laden's family. That was detained in Iran. The letter is addressed to a certain Tawfiq and it is authored by a certain Hafiz, both of whom are most likely members of al-Qaeda. It is dated 5 slash 6. Judging by its content, I have dated the letter to Friday, 23rd of July 2004. At that time, the group at Tawheed wal-Shihad, headed by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, referenced in the letter as al-Azrak, the parent group of today's Islamic state was suspected of being behind attacks against Shia in Iraq, but had not yet claimed responsibility. According to the letter, Iranian authorities reached out to al-Qaeda through awasid and intermediary. And this intermediary, according to the letter, told Hafiz and please indulge because I'm going to quote most of the letter here. I'm going to let the letter tell the story. And here I'm starting the quotation. The Iranians are interested in connecting with someone from the side of al-Ambda, bin Laden. And their interest is not limited to the issue of al-Marda, his family. Rather, in the first place, they are interested in a situation in Iraq, for they believe that the brother is there, specifically al-Zarkawi and his group, are behind the attacks on the holy Shia sites. That is why the Iranians are keen to meet with the representative from the side of bin Laden to discuss this issue, seek clarification about it, and look into the possibility of cooperating. Further on in the letter, according to the intermediary, the Iranians would be prepared to give some kind of support and assistance if an understanding is reached on some issues that are of importance to them. They need, at the very least, a letter signed by bin Laden in which he gives assurance that the Shia holy sites are not the target of Shia brothers, and that they are not among the targets that are to be hit. They wanted bin Laden to make it clear that what is happening in Iraq is the result of some erratic behavior on the part of al-Zarkawi and that bin Laden and his people are not pleased with these attacks and disapprove of targeting such places. And of quotation. Now, half of the author informed the intermediary that a letter from bin Laden was not possible and that he might be able to arrange a letter from one of his representatives. Even so, Hafiz doesn't seem to have much confidence in the exchange and is concerned about the lack of clarity. He told the intermediary, and I'm quoting again, until now we are still not confident or have any knowledge of the situation of bin Laden's family and it is therefore difficult to work or agree to the time set by the Iranians under these conditions, end of quotation. He also insisted that al-Qaeda would not agree to anything unless Iran released one of the patients, one of the bin Laden's family, so that we could assess the situation. Hafiz informed Taufiq that he would follow up with the intermediary in three days and as a first step he would ask him, and I'm quoting again, to speak on the phone with one of the patients, bin Laden's family, like Muhammad, the son of bin Laden, and or with one of the sheikhs detained there so that we could ascertain the seriousness of the intermediaries and that of those whom they represent and also to be able to understand the level of importance the Iranians assigned to this issue, end of quote. Despite Hafiz's suspicion as to Iran's willingness to provide reliable information about bin Laden's family, he still recommends that, and I'm quoting, it would be appropriate to have a discussion with them to resolve the issue of bin Laden's family and the possibility of getting some specialized assistance from them but without entering into any long-term agreements or make promises that we could not keep, end of quote. Now, one cannot conclusively ascertain from the letter that the intermediary was a necessary representing the views of Iranian officials. However, the mere fact that the intermediary had the audacity to seek assurances from none other than bin Laden suggests that he was a necessary for senior Iranian officials who could determine the fate of bin Laden's family. Whatever cooperation meant, and the letter does not say, it is unlikely that it occurred as a result of the intermediary's outreach to Hafiz. Other al-Qaeda documents intimate that it is only in 2009 that Iran began to release al-Qaeda prisoners. And the letter authored by the al-Qaeda leader, Atiyatullah Alibi, in June of that year in 2009, he expresses his delight, and I'm quoting, the Iranians released a group of brothers in several batches last month, and he goes on to say, our efforts, and I'm quoting him, which included escalating a political and media campaign, the threats we made, the kidnapping of their friend, the commercial counselor and the Iranian consulate in Peshawar, and other reasons that scared them based on what they saw we are capable of, to me, among the reasons that led them to expedite the release of these prisoners, and the quotation. His letter suggests that the Iranian authorities did not establish direct contact with al-Qaeda, and that they informed al-Qaeda of their intent to release jihadi prisoners through an intermediary. In Atiyah's words, and I'm quoting him again, the criminals, referring to the Iranians, did not send us any letter, nor did they send us a message through any of the brothers they released. Such behavior is, of course, not unusual for them. Indeed, it is typical of their mindset and method. They do not wish to appear to be negotiating with us or responding to our pressures, as if to suggest that their actions are purely one-sided and based on their own initiative, and I'm quoting. Now, between parentheses, going back to that two-page document that suggests that the Iranians reached out to al-Qaeda, while the letter really strongly suggests that Iran reached out to al-Qaeda, other declassified documents reveal that Iran was not the only state to have made such an effort. One letter, one of the interesting surprises of these documents addressed to bin Laden and authored by Atiyah, dated the 5th of April, 2011, includes a passage suggesting that British intelligence reached out to al-Qaeda to have an arrangement for their own, a quick pro quo over their own. Atiyah indicates that he received an email from Libyan brother, Aruwa, who was still in Iran, in which Aruwa told him that some Libyan brothers in Britain told him that the British intelligence spoke with him and requested that they try to contact those whom they knew in al-Qaeda. According to Aruwa, British intelligence asked, and I'm quoting, Libyan brothers to propose to their al-Qaeda contacts that Britain is prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan if al-Qaeda commits explicitly that it will not carry out any attacks against Britain or its interests. End of quote. CT practitioners may well meditate on this fact. Let me now turn to some of the documents that give an insight into the personal in bin Laden's life and needless to say what is personal for bin Laden is often political. Now one lengthy document allows us to be a fly on the wall, so to speak, in the bin Laden household in Abu Tawad. It was declassified by the CIA. It is a long handwritten document, it's very challenging to read, totaling 220 pages. It has been described as bin Laden's handwritten journal. I don't think it is bin Laden's handwriting. I believe the handwriting is that of bin Laden's daughter, possibly but not conclusively Miriam. And the ideas or reflections in the document are not exclusively those of bin Laden. The bulk of the document consists of summarizing and commenting on the news related to the Arab Spring, including transcribing some news program on the BBC and Al Jazeera. Those identified by name are his son Khalid, his wife Hamza, his daughter Miriam, and Sumaya, possibly his daughter. The transcribed sessions we have in this document show these family gatherings as a form of brainstorming and all involved partake in contributing ideas. For example, the female transcriber mentions an idea she has about restructuring archaida. The document was composed during the last two months of bin Laden's life, starting on March 6th, 2011, and ending on Sunday evening, the 1st of May, hours before bin Laden was killed. I believe this is the second such notebook, the first one may or may not have been recovered during the raid. So another, the first one, I'm sure it exists. I cannot stress enough how important the events of the Arab Spring were for bin Laden based on this document. They caused him to reconsider archaida strategies and the role it should play on the world stage. He was a spectator, not a driver of the events, and understandably his thoughts were shifting. Though he was hoping and expecting that all the regimes in the Middle East would fall and was trying to find a purposeful role for archaida to play during this historical period, at no point did he entertain the thought of collaborating with Iran to hasten the collapse of the regimes. References to Iran are marginal and they are consistently negative. Iran is mentioned in relation to the events in Bahrain where Saudi Arabia intervened to put an end to the protests that broke out there. Bin Laden and his family were reviewing the events and positing Iran's response if Saudi Arabia escalated its role in Bahrain. For example, he talks of Iran's policy of Ghadr, betrayal, he also expresses concern as to whether Iran would choose to mobilize the Shia in the Gulf and quoting him, if Iran chooses to escalate it, Khan for betrayal is intrinsic to its politics. Now, sticking with the personal, Bin Laden's mistrust of Iran and lack of any special contacts with Iranian officials is vividly illustrated in the letters he wrote to members of his family after they were released from detention in Iran in 2010. Upon hearing of their release, Bin Laden wrote to them to instruct them that before they had to Abu Tabad, they should leave behind everything they brought from Iran. And I'm quoting him, to replace everything the size of which could fit in the eye of a needle since tiny tracking devices have been deployed and that could be injected even into a pill. Since the Iranians cannot be trusted, it is probable that they would plant a tracking device in some of the belongings that you have brought with you from Iran. End of quote. Now, in another letter addressed to his wife, Um Hamza whom he knew had reached Waziristan, Bin Laden asks if she has any clues as to why the Iranians released her and the others. And I'm quoting him. Did you hear anything after your release that caused or forced the Iranians to release you in the first place or in the direction of Waziristan, in particular, he asked? In the same letter, Bin Laden's mistrust of Iranian authorities reaches another higher level. The letter refers to one that Um Hamza had written to him in which she described a treatment she had received in Iran following an episode of extreme dizziness. Bin Laden's initial queries are those that one would expect from a caring husband. When did your dizziness start? How long did it go on for? Please provide more details as to its symptoms. Also include the date when it was diagnosed and treated. As the letter progresses, Bin Laden's concerns go beyond routine caring questions. He tells her, it does not escape you the importance of dates when it comes to many medical issues. Realizing that he is pushing for more intimate information that may offend his wife, he adds, please pardon my insistence. Perhaps I am exhausting you with my request for more details. He goes on to ask Um Hamza to see another female doctor in Waziristan to describe to her the symptoms from which she had suffered. And to ask her to do an x-ray or ultrasound. And I'm quoting, if no alien body is found then we would have certainty and peace of mind to overcome our doubts. The language about conducting an ultrasound to verify that no alien body is found along with symptoms of dizziness, put all these together, suggests that Bin Laden was worried about a case of pregnancy. Um Hamza was either 60 or 61 at the time Bin Laden was writing the letter so one can assume that he was not accusing his wife of infidelity or alluding to a case of rape that resulted in getting her pregnant at that age. However, he was concerned about the treatment she had received in Iran. And it is possible he feared that the Iranian authorities may have conspired with a medical practitioner to impregnate his wife artificially, perhaps through a Huma in treatment she did not know about. This possibility might seem ludicrous but judging by the mistrust that our Qaeda leaders harbor for Iran and evident in many of the Abu Tabaq papers, this possibility would not have surprised them. So I'm gonna get to the concluding, the third part concluding remarks and as I promised I'm going to be brief. I need the Abu Tabaq documents that examined in this study provide no evidence that our Qaeda's ties with Iran involved operational collaboration. Now no friendly or familiar references are to be found in any of the documents that are examined. If Iranian authorities supported terrorism carried out by al Qaeda, bin Laden didn't know about it. The contention that al Qaeda is prepared to serve the agenda of Iran requires some skepticism. Thank you. Well that was an admirably brief, succinct conclusion. Thank you very much Nelly, it's fascinating. So talk to us a little bit about, I mean, 470,000 documents drop, a lot of them are newspapers, a lot of them are repeats, but I mean, the volume is just enormous. So how do you, I mean, how did you find that you mentioned 300 documents that you looked at? I mean, some of them I guess had been released already so you knew to, but how did you, how do you winnow, I mean, how do you, it seems like a massive thing just to identify the documents that are relevant. And of course, many of these documents are written by pseudonymously on both sides often. And so it's hard to know who's talking to who, which pseudonym refers to who. The documents themselves are for the pseudonyms right as well. So how do you kind of map all that and make the decisions about which documents are important? To be clear, I did not go through the 24,000 documents, but I did, I mean, because it is specific, most of the bulk of the documents that I covered for this study are those that had been declassified through the CTC and the Office of the DNI. But I was particularly interested by the handwritten document which you and I discussed in March. And in that 19 page document that was highlighted by the Long War Journal's analysts. So, but then I went through and I started clicking on these documents randomly. And as you rightly pointed out, many of them are actually from Al-Qudsal Arab, Al-Hayat, the PDF documents that are not, that are not. Because what was happening is the couriers were printing out Al-Quds and then giving it as a PDF to Bin Laden. I think so, because most of the things, there are references that he is getting them, you know, not electronically by internet, but they are saved most likely on phones, some of the technical term that they, you could save it on possibly something, but they got to him, but there are also videos, there are some, so there are some of the 72,000 files, I again, clicked on them randomly about videos and media and so on. It's difficult to, some of the 72,000 files that could have some interesting elements because in one of them, it was a picture of a specific letter that had been, that they got from somewhere about Hamas, so you could see, but it's not from Hamas to them. But you could see some really internal documents. I think the ODNI's documents were very helpful, the way they were released because they were classifying things. I don't think the translation was helpful if you want to get to the meaning of what the documents were, but they were helpful in a sense, these were internal communicates, you know what you were reading, you know what you're getting yourself into. So, but the CIA files are, it's a kind of warmth, if you want to say, because it's impossible to be able to go through them quickly and most of the ones that I clicked on, some of them could actually have blank pages. So, it's a challenge. So, I think it's a fairly, well, two questions. One is, so the exile, the book by Cappy Scott Clark and Adrian Levy has a lot of material about this period. How does, but they didn't, they had access to some documents, but not all of them when they wrote that book. But they also talked to a Mauritanian who you mentioned and people in the family. So, and as I recall, having read it quite a long time ago, the picture of the exile paints, which is a brilliant book which you should read if you haven't already, is, you know, this house arrest that the Al-Qaeda people were under wasn't at all like the Ritz-Carlton and Riyadh kind of house arrest. It seemed like quite a trial. And also that conditions could kind of improve and maybe sometimes they go shopping and then suddenly they're back. And some of this seemed to be on military bases and some of it seemed to be organized by Soleimani and the Codd's force. Is that, do the documents sort of? No. So, I also very much enjoyed the exile and I'm really thankful to Adrian who gave me an advance copy of the PDF. I think there is enormous valuable information in the book that you will not gonna find anywhere. And they interviewed the wives of Bin Laden which is also very, they really earned their trust for several years before they could get the interviews. But at the same time, I also respectfully disagree with some of the things that they come up with. I don't even think that they processed the information. They took many of the things that were told at face value. And so, you know, Al-Muritani can say whatever he wants to say now. And I think, you know, it's a, there are certain things that he would be right about and I could see that yes, that makes sense. And there are other aspects that do not necessarily make sense. And also let's not forget that sometimes things people aren't gonna say everything.  So, I found, you know, because they didn't really interrogate some of the things that they received, you end up having a certain incoherence about the situation. So by the end of the book, you find that Iran is supporting ISIS. It's supporting Nusra. It's supporting Al-Qaeda. It's supporting Hezbollah. I mean, all of this, and they're all kind of running the show from Iran. You know, I didn't get an internal coherence. There were several stories going on. And I do say, you know, with respect to all the kind of interviews that people do, and these are very, very valuable. But when we do get a document that tells us that in internal documents written by Jihadis, for Jihadis, I wanna privilege that document over a conversation. I couldn't agree with you more, because documents, as you said, the documents were not intended for a wider consumption at all. I think they were, I mean, often they were intended for maybe two people, right?  And that wasn't really clear, by the way, until the documents emerged, right? We didn't really know what position he played in the organization. But I mean, I don't think they were wanting these documents to go outside just themselves.  So the documents are incredibly valuable. And I mean, I'm racking my mind and perhaps somebody in the audience has an answer, but I don't think there's ever been a time where we've had this kind of document dump that is so valuable that we'll really, I mean, historians are gonna be, I hope you'll write a book about this, but historians are gonna be using these documents for the next several decades, and it's gonna take a long time to unpack them. But I get, so, but just going back to the question of, because I think it isn't relevant to the thesis of what you're talking about, which is, how would you describe the treatment that the Al-Qaeda, from the documents that the bin Laden family members and the Al-Qaeda leaders and what kind of treatment were they getting in Iran? You mentioned these three phases. I mean, were they living in a hotel? Were they living under house arrest? What were the conditions? Well, this 19-page document tell us is very helpful. But also it's helpful to put things in context. I mean, when the Jihadis got to Iran at the end of 2001, they got there not with their Kalashnikov, they were there with women and children. So they got there and Iran didn't round them up and shoot them. They didn't set up, they didn't set up Guantanamo for them. But what they really wanted is to process them out. This is what we got from this first document, the first phase where they got there. And it seems that other countries were involved in the process, the Saudi embassy is mentioned in that. And they were actually on the lower level of the passage. The author says that some of the lower level people, they cheered us up because we were the people who attacked America. So on that early stage, Iran wanted to kind of welcome, but then goodbye. The second stage, because they started violating these security measures and because we realized, from the Iranian perspective, they became part of the axis of evil. They started detaining them, but then also they could process them out. And then as of the start of the Iraq war and when Al-Zarkawi began, but sorry, in the second phase also, he tells us the document that they were in, they were treated very respectfully and they were put in respectful places, but there were security guards. In some instances in hotels, but there were security guards. The women didn't have security guards. But they were treated respectfully and they would take down a file, they would complete a file about each of the shihadis before they could process them. After the Iraq war, they decided that they were going to keep them. He mentions a number, maybe three or four people who were released after 2003 because one of the guys, his wife was about to die or something, they were based on humanitarian reasons. But all of the others they were arrested with security measures, but the bulk of the people by that time, many of the shihadis decided that they were going to evade getting arrested by the Iranians and spread across the country. So yes, I didn't find anything negative about the treatment of the Iranians. They don't mention torture, they don't mention, but they weren't going to allow them out. So I, it's not, it's, you know, it's not, there is nothing that would tell us that they were mistreated, but they were not really being supported either. They were not enabled. Have you looked, just a suggestion which you may already have done, but have you looked at the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the torture and cross-referenced it with? Because even in the, I mean, there's a great deal of information about that immediate post 9-11 period when KSM and others went to Karachi and how they organized the movement into Iran. Have you looked at this? No. I think it would be useful because it's another kind of way of kind of cross-referencing some of the information. And in fact, you know, I don't know if you've, the Senate Intelligence Committee report has never really been fully exploited by historians because it's so big. And, but it's much broader than the question of torture because the people who wrote the report, were able to declassify a great deal of the actual sort of post 9-11 history of the interrogations and the footnotes are very useful kind of road map. So I would recommend that. The other question I had was on the British intelligence. I mean, this is where the documents have a certain limit, right? Because this document says, I mean, the British intelligence gave this feeler to a group of guys in London who were associated probably with the Libyan Islamic fighting group and they've kind of contacted somebody and we've kind of heard about this. So this is like maybe fifth hand. And because, I mean, I'm naturally kind of skeptical the British would pull out of Afghanistan and do a deal with Al Qaeda. It doesn't seem super plausible. So I mean, the documents themselves need to be treated skeptically in, right?  I don't know. But it doesn't, I'm not sure that Atiyah wants to say once he would have come up with it. And what surprised me about Atiyah's letter is not that they reached out, that he said, we will think about having a suitable arrangement. I would have thought he would have completely dismissed it. So Atiyah, when he speaks about Iran, he's way more hostile than when he spoke about Britain. So, but I, but it could be. Let's say the whole thing's absolutely true. Which I think it seems unlikely. It sounds like Chinese whispers, but let's say it is true. I mean, obviously nothing came of it. And that's another interesting thing about these documents is, so for instance, the potential outreach to the Pakistanis, which got some attention, Al Qaeda wanting to do some kind of truth. Well, all we have is just that one side of this discussion, right? It's not clear that any discussion really happened with the Pakistanis. You know, this is a, I don't want to get into this subject really extensively, but it's also very complicated with the Pakistanis. And the hostile remarks from Al Qaeda against Pakistan, they're littered in the documents. Now the complication gets in, in terms of some of the groups that the Pakistanis have used to reach out to Al Qaeda and to track them at times. So one of the documents about lessons lies is, you know, we did them. It was the liability of opening up to Lakshari Taiba, for example. Or, you know, we know that the Shashi Muhammadi are talking to us on the basis of the Pakistanis in order to get to us, but they don't even trust them. Al Qaeda isn't trusting this communication. So it's not, you know, there are essays, you know, how to launch Shihad in Pakistan. So I didn't see any symbiotic relationship between Pakistan's state and Al Qaeda.  And he's so... There's no evidence in the documents that he had any connections to the Pakistanis. With the Pakistani state, no. There are references to Pakistani brothers. There are references to the Haqqanis. There are references to Jashi Muhammadi, Lakshari Taiba, in terms of, but it doesn't, it seems as if Al Qaeda thinks, in some of the ones that I looked at, it seems as if Al Qaeda is not really trusting them. They think that they are using, the Pakistanis are using them to get to Al Qaeda. I think it's generally accepted that Saif al-Adal ordered in 2003 the kind of campaign that Al Qaeda mounted in Saudi Arabia. There's nothing in the documents that sort of... No, I didn't find a reference to this. I mean, it could be there. But again, the Al Qaeda hates the Saudi establishment. They hate Ben-Nayyaf, the counter-terrorism center of Ben-Nayyaf, and what they did and how they tried to get the religious scholars against Saudi Arabia. There are individuals in Saudi that are funding Al Qaeda, and this is also another layer that requires further research. But again, I didn't find any connections between Al Qaeda and officially Saudi Arabia. Great, so if you have a question, just wait for the mic, we'll start with Barbara Slavin here, and then in front here was, thank you. Thank you very much, Barbara Slavin from the Atlantic Council, and forgive me, I came in late, so I hope I didn't miss anything. One of the things, everything you've said jives with my understanding of the relationship. One thing I wonder about, did you find any reference to the fact that Al Qaeda believed that Iran was holding these people to use as bargaining chips with the Americans? I think specifically in the run-up to and immediately after the US invasion of Iraq, US diplomats talked to Iranian diplomats about the Mujahideen e-Hulk that were in Iraq, and Iranians had an expectation that these people might be turned over to them, and in return the suggestion was they would give the United States Saif al-Adl and bin Laden's son and others. Did you find any reference to that in the documents you saw? It's very interesting you say that. So the document, the report that is published today is really about Al Qaeda's voice, and I don't talk on behalf of the United States or on behalf of Iranian authorities, so no interviews were done for that purpose, but it's really interesting what you say, because the bargaining chip is actually, is that Shihadi operative who write that in his report that he believes that as of 2003, this is how they wanted, that Iran wanted to use them as a bargaining chip. Now there is, and this is also not in the document. Did you say it was an illusion? No, no, however, however, there is an illusion that again the book that we talked about earlier, they interviewed some U.S. officials who actually dealt with Iranian diplomats immediately after 9-11, and in that book, they mentioned that Zarif at the time alluded to a point about something that this could be just one part of the story. Now what I got from the book on this aspect, and I think Peter may be able to know more about this, that immediately after 9-11 I think the Iranians had hoped that the United States would go in on September 12th and invade Afghanistan, but they were very frustrated with the Americans for not doing that. They also note that Iran actually provided maps of Afghanistan to the U.S., and so they seem to have worked really, they collaborated at least with the United States and then, more and behold, the Axis of Evil. So it's sort of what my interpretation, and here this is completely speculation on my part, is that since all these jihadis had been welcomed immediately after 9-11, if they've been welcomed in a nice way to be processed and so on, perhaps some more senior jihadis would come through. And this would be something that Iran would be able to put on the table in its relationship with the U.S. Perhaps there's a form of rapprochement that they wanted to have, but that really didn't come through, and what we got is an Axis of Evil, then the Iraq War, which it was not so much just the United States being in Iraq nearby, but it was Zarkawi going after the holy sites, the Shia holy sites, and they really wanted to make use of these detainees as a bargaining chip, yeah. Gentlemen here. Thank you very much, Mark Katz from Georgia Mason University, really fascinating presentation, and I like how you essentially let Al Qaeda speak and listen to its voice. My question is, you presented that, they obviously had a very hostile negative image of Iran. Was there anything in the documents that you saw that indicated that they were planning, thinking about considering any actions against Iran? In other words, if Iran had done all these hostile things to them, were there conditions in which they might retaliate or do anything, and what might those have been? Thank you. They did consider that, but not for the moment. They said Iran is a postponed enemy, and at one point, this 19-page document, he says, look, all these smuggling money in personnel has recently diminished. The value of it has recently diminished. They weren't probably able to do as much smuggling by that time, and if the Iranians didn't want to, were going to put even more pressure that they would consider. But to be honest, did they really want to mount something? I don't think so. And I found it, so there is one other document, which is, in one instance, I think that there's a guy by the name Karim. I think it's Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who was after Al-Zarkawi was killed. There were Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who were the leaders of al-Waqairah in Iraq. Actually, they had called it by the Islamic State of Iraq, and they threatened to attack Iran. And one of the documents, possibly by Bin Laden, possibly by somebody else, was furious with them, saying, and this is really quoted left, right, and center, just so selectively, including by the Arabic press, we should know better, it says, why are you threatening Iran? Don't you know that we use Iran as a passageway to smuggle money and personnel? So that's the end of the sentence, and people quoted, and said, well, that's full proof. The second sentence, here's what he says, it's a political liability for you to threaten to attack Iran if you don't carry through with your attack. So I'm not suggesting that you carry out an attack, but if you are really capable of carrying out an attack, I suggest that you don't give them a full warning. I would attack them, let them figure it out that it was you, and then keep going. So there is no friendly reference, and this line is used by most people who use that document really irresponsibly, as if this is Iran, and I find it just, and it is in this report, I include it, but I include what else was being said. So I didn't think that al-Qaeda was going to, I didn't find any capability or plans for al-Qaeda to wanna attack Iran. In fact, the main plans that were in place, in place, if this is gonna take it into a different subject, but this is about al-Qaeda's operational plans. So there is a figure that I got to know, I don't know if people knew him before, but I got to know him through the documents, first with the CTC, and more with the ODNI's documents, by the name Sheikh Yunus. Sheikh Yunus appears to be a figure that really impressed bin Laden, and impressed him because he wanted to make plans for international operations. And the international operations by 2010, they were very weak, and we get a letter from Atiyah to bin Laden, telling him that our capabilities are pretty weak. Now, we're just kind of, we would have, but by God's will, we would be able to do some kind of operations, but it's really weak, but what we get the communication between Sheikh Yunus and bin Laden is that there is back and forth about the plan that they're going to do to train people. In that training course that bin Laden is telling Sheikh Yunus, I want you to get the best, the elite, I want you to be able to bring them in, devise a training course, consult with the Shihadi brothers in terms of what you're going to teach, and let me have a look at the document at your proposal before and after you get the feedback, and let's mount, let's put these training together to develop some cadres that we are lacking in order to mount international operations. He goes through the documents to educate Sheikh Yunus about the importance of attacking the United States, as well as oil resources overseas. What he really wanted is for popular anger in the United States to put pressure on the government to get out of Muslim majority states. And he tells him, he says, you know, in Vietnam, they lost so, they lost way more soldiers than they lost in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  This is what we need to get to. We need to be able to make enough pressure inside the United States so that they would be able to change their tactics and their policies, but we need to make them suffer and get the popular anger, because in all its wars, the United States did not suffer outside, but it really, their weakness came from within their own popular anger. So he doesn't, he said, this is our main priority, the United States and oil outside, so that the people would become angry. This is the plan that's before the Arab Spring. This is what he had the plan. And there is another document, in fact, possibly before the Arab Spring, in which Sheikh Yunus had reached the border of Iran with six shihadis. Atiyah is telling him that we got to the border of Iran. I can't be sure about, because you know how I said in my presentation that they need to be prepared to die if they get captured, and he tells him that we've asked Sheikh Yunus to make a statement about his own personal, about his biography before they enter into Iran, which tells you that this is a treacherous past going in. And so Sheikh Yunus, from my understanding, and Peter, you may correct me if I'm wrong, he was captured after Abu Tabaad, but this is a guy, this was going to be the international operations guy. Now, the Arab Spring happened, and you can tell that this really shifted the paradigm of bin Laden, and it was shifting by the day. The notebook that I mentioned in my presentation, it's tome two out of, because there is another one earlier. So I don't know what he thought about in the first collection of materials, but this is where you can see bin Laden on a daily basis, changing his mind and shifting his strategy. But just to go to your question, you mentioned our kind of kidnap this Iranian diplomat in Bashar al-Wa, right? Yes. It looks like there was a, I mean, the release of that diplomat precipitated the release of the family members, is that basically correct? Or, I mean, they were using it as leverage. That was part of it, that was part of it, so certainly, but no attack, but they did, you're right, they did capture the diplomat, and there was an exchange of prisoners, and there was money involved as well. There was $3 million, but there were also, now, was this the only, was this the only reason that was going on about releasing members? I'm not so sure. And I think bin Laden's questions to his wife on Hamza are worth meditating on. Yeah, so what do you think the answer is? So if I'm to ask, it's not that they detained him, why did they release them? Now, this is not in the report, because as I said, I only looked at the documents. But I do, if I think of the picture from a panoramic point of view, in November 2010, the United States put chundala on its FTO list. They were specific about releasing these detainees through Aziristan heading to Pakistan. So the questions that I would, I don't have answers, but the questions that I would ask, what was going on in terms of some of the conversations that were happening between, I'd be very interested between the U.S., Pakistan, and Iran, were there any discussions about how we could start making? Because also there were discussions about a new era of U.S.-Iran relationship, were both sides trying to have some kind of distant friendliness towards the rapprochement. These would be the questions that I would ask, but I don't have an answer. Gentleman here. Hi, I'm Wes Morgan with Politico. There's a point in the documents, I think the ODNI release, maybe the CTC release, in the summer and fall of 2010, where Atiya and Bin Laden are corresponding about kind of how bad things have gotten in Aziristan because of the CIA air campaign, how horrible it is there, they can't move around. And so, and they're talking about sort of possible backup places to go to relocate some of the brothers they talk about. And they talk about Qunar-Nuristan in Afghanistan. They talk about Balochistan. I think I could be wrong. I think Iran also comes up in that context. I'm just wondering if that's an episode that you examined or if there's any evidence that anybody was actually sent to Iran as a result of those conversations. There were other also documents in the ones that were released after that that they do mention. Going to Iran is not a secret in these documents. From what I could tell that this was not done openly or in coordination with the Iranian authorities. So Iran, and also they work, there is another reference which they refer to, perhaps sending Hamza, Bin Laden's son, perhaps to stay with the tribes in Sindh. Sindh is the Islamic terminology for referring to Southwest Pakistan with the tribes there. So there are many areas that they would like to consider as part of their plans. But yes, at the time, Bin Laden was worried. I think he wanted to protect the people who were valuable. He was prepared to be patient before. He didn't want to risk individuals precisely because the drone campaign was really having major impact on them. At one point there is another one by Atiyah that was released after the CTC ones where they were so frustrated with all the other militant groups like the Pakistani Taliban and so on who are using mobile phones, who are using the internet. And they were so frustrated about this because they can't control them. And he says, you know, the area that was in Miran Shah and he says the area is infested with spies, the Pakistani spies and so on. So yes, but I didn't see anything in collaboration with openly. It could have happened, but I didn't see it in the documents. But the way I read that was like he was thinking it was kind of blue sky. You know, we may have to move. Where can we move? I mean, there's no evidence that they did anything. They didn't move to Kunar or further into Pakistan. We don't, I mean, there's no evidence for that. Back to the whereabouts and activities of Hamza during these years. So at the time when they were writing, we get a letter from Hamza and we get a letter from Hamza to his mother who had reached Abu Tabad and another letter to his father. He wants to get together with his father. They want to talk about, you know, Islamic issues, global issues. Hamza, as you know, has been releasing public statements in those letters in 2010, in 2011. He was very enthusiastic. He wanted to train and he wanted, he told his father, I want to be treated like any other Shihadi. I want to be on the battlefield. And he didn't want to be treated any more favorably than the others. Now, Atiyah, I think he was a little bit concerned about Hamza and possibly even bin Laden because in that, Hamza tells him, you know, that this is what he wants. He wants training, et cetera. And in the document transcribing the conversations in the bin Laden household, it's either summarizing Atiyah's letter or noting what he's going to respond because it says, you know, yes, but do not do as in other words within limits.  Let's not endanger him. That's the kind of, they want to train him, but they're worried. Mr. Don, gentlemen here. John Lindbergh, retired Foreign Service. Thank you again for an excellent presentation. I'd like to follow up on Barbara Slavin's question a little bit. More specifically, the period around 2003-2004 when the U.S. Army had occupied Iraq, including Camp Ashraf, the base of the Mojahedin, Mojahedin al-Halq. And if you found anything in the documents that went beyond, it was more specific, they were more specific about than just bargaining chips, but that would cast light on this report that there was talk of a swap between the al-Qaeda people in Iran and specifically the leaders of the MEK who were in confinement at Ashraf at the time. And that I did not find in the 19-page document, he does refer to the fact that he believes that the United States had supported Jundallah, or the Ahle, he refers to them as, he doesn't say specifically Jundallah. He says Ahle Sunnah, the Sunni brothers, the Balouj brothers, which I'm assuming it's actually the militant Sunnis who have actually mounted a campaign of terrorism in Iran against Iranian authorities. The operative in the 19-page document who is writing to other Shihadi leaders, and he suspects that the United States had supported this group, had tried to enable this group to mount attacks against Iran. Now, I don't know whether it happened or not, but this group was listed by the United States in November 2010 on the FTO list. So as I said, I can't say anything on the perspective, from the perspective of the United States or from Iranian perspective. But from the documents, he suspected this specifically, but not Mujahideen Al-Khalq. I didn't come here. Thanks, Warren Strobel with Reuters. You sort of alluded to this earlier, but I'm curious, given your research, the translation analysis you did, what you make of the Trump administration's recent comments on the relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda, specifically referring to things that President Trump and Secretary Pompeo have said. And secondly, there's been some commentary that the CIA released. It was done differently. That wasn't under ODNI auspices. And if I'm correct, the material was given directly to the Long War Journal. There's been some commentary that that was done to push forward a particular narrative. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on that, given your long history with these documents. Thanks. You know, as I said, I'm only looking. It's valuable to have the documents. And look, the CTC got an earlier version in 2012. So why wouldn't another outfit get through the Long War Journal? It would have been good, though, if they had done more research. But I think it's also unfair because they gave them 24,000 documents. And I think it's really unfair to make this. Now, did they do it for a political statement? I don't know. My sense is that the administration on this issue, regardless of which administration, I mean, I wouldn't presume to tell them anything about what they plan or what they do. But I do know what they need. And what they need is really a dispassionate analysis of these documents. The relationship between the United States and Iran is clearly important to this administration and to any other administration. So I think that I can say not what they want or what they should do, but we as scholars who are actually, who do our job, we need to be, we need to give the administration the most objective analysis of these documents possible because they really need to be armed by the best information that they have at hand. Beyond that, I can't speak on behalf of the administration. Well, you've defined, in your summary, you said there was no evidence for operational collaboration. So that's a sort of negative definition of this relationship. But if you were to sort of say, to characterize this relationship, is it sort of passive support? What, I mean, I know it's a hard question to answer because the relationship seemed to have changed and went on for a long time, but how would you characterize it? Between al-Qaeda and Iran, you mean? Yeah. You know, since 2011 is challenging for me to say. Based on the documents. Because I've only covered the 2011. I don't think even, it's not even passive support. I couldn't say passive support. They don't like them. They have to deal with, al-Qaeda has to deal with a very difficult situation. And, you know, Bin Laden is egalitarian about his jihadis and so on, but it is, I've also since in the documents, he really deeply cares about his family. Yeah. And his family was really detained by the Iranians and they had, they had the upper hand. And you can tell, we don't just know it from the Abbottabad papers. We also know, for example, from the intercepted communications that we had from Atiyah and al-Zawahiri that were sent to Zarkali back in 2005, warning him about his indiscriminate attacks against the Shiites.  We've got, they've got the Iranians, they've got more than 100 al-Qaeda personnel in Iran.  And so they never, I can't see support is not, it's not a word that I would use for al-Qaeda. They were in an impossible situation. They had to make do with a very difficult situation. Okay. Lady over here. Thank you. My name's Jillian Burns. I'm a retired Foreign Service Officer now teaching at GW. I have a question. Did you come across anything relating to al-Qaeda's relationship with Islamist groups operating in Iranian Kurdistan or Iraqi Kurdistan pre-2003 and how they would try to, if they had a relationship, how they'd try to balance that against the Iranian government who of course feared the Iranian Kurdish groups operating, extremist groups operating in that territory? In Iran or in Iraq? Or on both? There are references to, are you talking about Ansar al-Islam? This I came across not through Iran, but about the divisions that were taking place in Iraq because when Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, I mean it started before Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza, but the divisions in Iraq started happening soon after al-Zarkawi became, was accepted into the al-Qaeda umbrella and there were serious divisions and this is an interesting element about bin Laden's leadership, I think. He really wanted to manage differences and he kept a lid on it for several years. The situation in Iraq was really, and including he refers to Ansar al-Islam, he really wanted all the shihadis in Iraq to unite under one umbrella. So the references were not about Iran per se, but about the Ansar al-Islam and how we're gonna unify the banner of shihad in Iraq and that was a very challenging situation and he tried to keep, he didn't want, he didn't want to air the shihadis dirty laundry and he tried to manage it as much as possible, he was concerned about the public criticism within the shihadi leadership and he wanted to keep a lid on it but this is the only reference that, in several places on the al-Islam, but not concerning Iran. Any other questions? Well, final one here. Hi, my name is Jack Rapazki, unaffiliated. When did the documents end? What was that date compared to when they were actually captured and were all these written in Iran and then captured in Abadabad? Or were any of them written outside of Iran? So the last reference that we have in Abadabad is Sunday evening, the 1st of May, 2011, hours before bin Laden was killed. So that was the very last thing that we get to hear from there. When did they start? I haven't looked at the entire collection. It is possible that some were not available there. Perhaps not everything was recovered. That document, the transcribed documents of these family gatherings in the bin Laden household, I am pretty sure that there is the first volume of it. That, I'm very sure, but I don't know whether it was recovered and the reason why. I'm saying it may not, even though I haven't gone through all the 24,000 PDF files, I suspect that the CIA would have told us about it. They would have included it on their website. So I wonder whether they recovered it or not. It's a handwritten document. It's highly challenging to read. And if I may say something about it, it was, so if you take it for granted that he wrote it, that bin Laden wrote it, you wouldn't understand the thing. You would think that the guy has lost his marbles. It's just like it was, but it's only as you read through that you find some voices just do not make sense, but these are the news, what is going on on the news. And the reason I really triggered, probably halfway through, bin Laden, during the Arab Spring, he had started reading a book by somebody called Majid al-Kilani. The book is about how to reclaim the generation, how to renew the generation of Saladin and reclaim Jerusalem. I haven't read that book, but this really made a huge impression on bin Laden. And so he told his family members that they should read it. And I'm really grateful he did that because at a certain page, this is when his daughter is summarizing some pages that she read from that book. And she says, Anna Azima, which is the declension, the feminine declension. Gosh, a relief. Now I understand that this is not, now I can start understanding that this is, because it wasn't making sense. And she comments on that book. And then you could tell, I mean, in instances, there are question, answer, voices that may be al-Qaeda, voices that may not be al-Qaeda. And then this is really, it starts to make sense and you wanna reread it and start making, start reading it. But the other challenging part about it is that, the person is transcribing these conversations. It's very quick. And sometimes they're not finishing all the sentences because they assume what the end of the sentence is. So you have to kind of try to guess. And at one point, there was a, one of the documents is a long speech, public statement that Bin Laden wanted to release back in 2007. It never came out. And now is the time he says, should we now release Bayan al-Iman, which if I hadn't read that document, I wouldn't know what he was talking about, the public statement on faith. And so you find these, it's very challenging to be able to understand it coherently from beginning to end. But it's a very valuable document. It is really being a fly on the wall in the Bin Laden household. Well, thank you, Nellie. Brilliant presentation. Thank you.


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