Intel Windfall at bin Laden Compound

Even more than the personal strike against bin Laden, the treasure trove of data recovered from his compound might be the most significant blow against the continued survival of Al Qaeda:
The assault force of Navy SEALs snatched a trove of computer drives and disks during their weekend raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, yielding what a U.S. official called "the mother lode of intelligence."

The special operations forces grabbed personal computers, thumb drives and electronic equipment during the lightning raid that killed bin Laden, officials told POLITICO.

..."Hundreds of people are going through it now," an official said, adding that intelligence operatives back in Washington are very excited to find out what they have.

"It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable," the official said.
Normally, I'd speculate that bin Laden wouldn't have kept information that yielded actionable intelligence on his hard drives, but the fact that he was able to lay low in that compound undisturbed for as long as six years makes me think there's a pretty good chance his outfit felt secure enough there to be a little careless. Good.

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