US official: "Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"

Politico's Mike Allen reports that during last night's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the Navy SEAL assault force is reported to have grabbed an assortment of computers, thumb drives, and disks. A U.S. official quoted in the Politico piece described this as "the mother lode of intelligence."

"They cleaned it out," one official said. "Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"

U.S. officials are about to find out. The material is being examined at a secret location in Afghanistan.

"Hundreds of people are going through it now," an official said, adding that intelligence operatives back in Washington are very excited to find out what they have.

"It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable," the official said.

Here's a crazy thought: what if there is no cache of OBL devices, and this is disinformation spread to destabilize what remains of Al Qaeda morale?


Osama bin Laden raid yields trove of computer data
(Politico)