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The books bin Laden read at his hideaway

 
Osama bin Laden was killed when U.S. Navy SEALs raided his compound in Pakistan in 2011. The SEALS scooped up books, letters and other documents. 
AP
Osama bin Laden was killed when U.S. Navy SEALs raided his compound in Pakistan in 2011. The SEALS scooped up books, letters and other documents. AP
Published May 20, 2015

Noam Chomsky, Bob Woodward, U.S. foreign policy, Islam — these are the names and topics that one would have stumbled upon if perusing Osama bin Laden's bookshelf in his Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound. Four years after the bin Laden raid, the United States has declassified a list of 39 English-language books the former al-Qaida leader had on display at his home.

The non-fiction books include topics such as:

U.S. conquests abroad: America's Strategic Blunders, Obama's Wars, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

Islam: A Brief Guide to Understanding Islam, Christianity and Islam in Spain, In Pursuit of Allah's Pleasure.

International relations and war: Handbook of International Law, Guerrilla Air Defense: Antiaircraft Weapons and Techniques for Guerrilla Forces, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies.

In addition, Bin Laden apparently worked his way through conspiracy theory classics such as Bloodlines of the Illuminati, by Fritz Springmeier, and Secrets of the Federal Reserve, by Eustace Mullins, a Holocaust denier.

Also released Wednesday were some letters bin Laden wrote in his years in hiding.

In one letter, bin Laden urges one of his deputies to inform "our brothers" they must keep their focus on fighting Americans. Their "job is to uproot the obnoxious tree by concentrating on its American trunk, and to avoid being occupied with the local security forces," bin Laden writes.

Another bin Laden letter mocks President George W. Bush's "war on terror," saying it had not achieved stability in Iraq or Afghanistan and questioning why U.S. troops were "searching for the lost phantom" — weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In a video letter to one of his wives, bin Laden says, according to the U.S. translation, "Know that you do fill my heart with love, beautiful memories, and your long suffering of tense situations in order to appease me and be kind to me."

Much of what came out of bin Laden's compound remains classified