The United States has released letters written by Osama bin Laden in his final hideout showing how he fretted about his increasingly dysfunctional terror network.
A selection of 17 documents seized in last year's raid on bin Laden 's house in Pakistan have been posted online by the US Army's Combating Terrorism Centre .
The documents were retrieved from memory sticks, memory cards and the hard drive of the al Qaeda chief's computer at his Abbottabad compound .
The correspondence shows a leader revered but sometimes ignored by field commanders, who dismissed him as out of touch even as he urged them to keep attacking US targets.
Bin Laden also worried about the loss of trust from Muslims he wished to incite against their government and the West.
"I plan to release a statement that we are starting a new phase to correct (the mistakes) we made," Bin Laden wrote in 2010.
"In doing so, we shall reclaim, God willing, the trust of a large segment of those who lost their trust in the jihadis."
While Bin Laden saw al Qaeda's
standing with Muslim populations at risk of crumbling, the documents show he remained focused on attacking Americans and coming up with plots, however improbable, to kill US leaders.
Bin Laden especially wished to target aeroplanes carrying General David Petraeus and even US President
Barack Obama , reasoning that an assassination would elevate an "utterly unprepared" vice president Joe Biden into the presidency and plunge the US into crisis.
The documents reveal internal correspondence within the al Qaeda network, including letters authored by bin Laden and leaders of the group's affiliate in Yemen and fellow militants in Somalia and Pakistan.
The papers include letters or draft letters dated from September 2006 to April 2011 - a total of 175 pages in the original Arabic.
It is not clear if any of the documents reached their intended destinations.
White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan said this week that bin Laden's own words confirm America is safer with him gone.
Mr Brennan says bin Laden wrote of his worries that his leaders were being killed so quickly the group would not survive.
The release of the documents were part of a nearly week-long commemoration of the anniversary of the bin Laden killing.
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