Washington — A computer used by Osama bin Laden's agents in Afghanistan could be an intelligence bonanza pointing to future methods of attack and inside information about how the al-Qaida terrorist network operates, former military officials and analysts said Monday.
A U.S. intelligence official confirmed that a computer bought by The Wall Street Journal in Kabul apparently had been used by al-Qaida. It contained memos of the terrorist group's chemical and biological weapons program, justifications for killing civilians and a propaganda video made from footage of people fleeing from the World Trade Center, the Journal reported.
Increasingly, officials told The Associated Press, computers are replacing confidential memos as a prime target when looking for intelligence left behind by a routed enemy. The faster the enemy is destroyed, the juicier the information.
"It's like in the old days when you have safes, you'd have hand grenades laying around to take out the safe," said Marc Enger, former director of operations at the Air Intelligence Agency, the Air Force's intelligence arm. "These guys were more intent on getting out than worrying about information left behind."
Enger said American forces retrieved valuable information from computers in Iraq and Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War as well as in the 1989 invasion of Panama.
"We got good data there," Enger said, citing evidence of financial transactions and drug trafficking. "It was in (Panamanian Gen. Manuel) Noriega's personal underground command center. They found computers in there that had all kinds of stuff."
A looter in Kabul said he got the desktop computer after a U.S. bombing raid in November that killed several senior officials of al-Qaida, the Journal said. The newspaper said it bought the machine from the looter for $1,100.
The terrorist group functioned like a multinational corporation, with memos referring to al-Qaida as "the company" and its leadership as "the general management," the newspaper said.
One memo referred to a "legal study" of the killing of civilians, in which the writer said he had found ways to keep "the enemy" from using the killing of "civilians, specifically women and children," to undermine the militants' cause, the Journal said.
A letter addressed to top al-Qaida lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri said "hitting the Americans and Jews is a target of great value and has its rewards in this life and, God willing, the afterlife," the Journal said. The author of the letter said he had written to bin Laden separately.
While the Journal said many of the files were protected by passwords, Enger said American technicians have had little problem overcoming those kinds of technological obstacles.
The computer also contains a video file made after Sept. 11 that uses television footage of people fleeing the World Trade Center, combined with a sound track of mocking chants and prayers in Arabic, the newspaper said.
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