Bin Laden’s ‘bookshelf’ shows his interest in conspiracy theories

The US government has released a list of English-language texts seized from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan in 2011 showing the al-Qaeda leader to have an avid interest in conspiracy theories and understanding western culture.

Some 103 documents including correspondence between members of the bin Laden family and his communications with terrorist groups around the world have also been released.

The material was recovered by the US Navy Seal team that raided bin Laden’s compound and killed the terrorist leader on May 2nd, 2011.

The records show bin Laden intent on attacking Americans and urging militants in North Africa and Yemen to target US interests.

In family letters he is seen as an affectionate father, taking great interest in family weddings, and in one letter, dated August 2008, shows himself to be a tearful husband missing one of his wives.

The documents detail a range of interests from the Arab Spring uprisings to the German economy to the effects of climate change on the Muslim world. He expresses concerns about CIA drone strikes on jihadi leaders that are “exhausting us”.

About half of the 38 English-language books recovered from bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout were conspiracy theory books concerning the Freemasons, the Illuminati and other secret societies and a volume suggesting 9/11 was an inside job.

These books included Bloodlines of the Illuminati by the American writer Fritz Springmeier, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who writes about the "New World Order" led by families and organisations, and The New Pearl Harbour: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin, a "9/11 Truther" who suggests in his book that there was a conspiracy involving parts of the US government in the September 11th, 2001 attacks.

The al-Qaeda leader also had the transcript of a 1977 US congressional hearing into an alleged CIA mind control project.

The collection, dubbed "Bin Laden's bookshelf" by US intelligence, is a digital library of texts that included volumes by Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky, books about the CIA, the US military and war strategy, and mainstream tomes such as Obama's Wars, the 2010 book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward.

"This release contains a list of primarily English-language materials that the US intelligence community assesses informed Osama bin Laden's understanding of the West, and thus informed his strategy to impact the West's decision making," said Office of the Director of National Intelligence spokesman Jeffrey Anchukaitis.

The release of the information comes a week after veteran American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in an article in the London Review of Books that, contrary to the official story, the US government worked with the Pakistanis on the raid on Abbottabad compound and that documents recovered in the raid were fakes.