Bin Laden Worried About His Legacy, al-Qaida's Image

Osama bin Laden spent the final months of his life worried about his legacy and the image of al-Qaida. New excerpts from documents seized when he was killed in a raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan a year ago show him trying to regain control over factions from Yemen to Somalia, as well as independents who he believed had harmed his terrorist group’s image, The Washington Post reported.

“He was not a recluse; he was the CEO of a global terrorist organization,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA counterterrorism official, told the Post. “He was receiving communications from al-Qaida’s operatives literally around the world, and he was instructing them to carry out acts of terror.”

The documents also show that bin Laden worried about lost opportunities for al-Qaida in the Arab Spring movement and the killing of Muslims.

Libyan-born Atiyah Abd al-Rahman was a key al-Qaida advocate for stopping the killings of Muslims, the Post reported.

“To the end, Atiyah kept trying to rein in attacks inside the Middle East,” Jarret Brachman, a consultant on al-Qaida, told the Post. “Both he and bin Laden remained rabid in their hatred for the West. But they felt that attacks within Muslim countries were bad for their public image.”