How Bin Laden plotted to bring down Air Force One to kill Obama

Osama Bin Laden urged followers not to ‘waste our effort’ with attacks on Britain, but to focus exclusively on defeating America.

He plotted to bring down a plane carrying President Barack Obama, claiming it would mean the accession of Vice-President Joe Biden, who was “utterly unprepared” for the job.

The revelations emerged in a cache of letters and documents recovered from Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan and released online on Thursday, a year after his death in a raid by US Navy SEALs.

They offer a rare insight into his thinking, with one letter drafted just a week before he died.

Bin Laden was clear he saw America as his overriding terror target.

“Even though we have the chance to attack the British, we should not waste our effort to do so but concentrate on defeating America, which will lead to defeating the others, God willing,” he wrote.

“Any arrow and mine we have should be directed against Americans, disregarding all other enemies, including NATO, and concentrating on Americans only.”

And his prime target was President Obama.

Bin Laden ordered two units to be set up, in Pakistan and Bagram, Afghanistan – the home of a major US base – to attack aircraft carrying Mr Obama and his vice-president.

He clearly wanted gaffe-prone Mr Biden in the White House and said “the killing would have a serious impact on the course of the war” because Obama was “the man of this phase.”

He ruled out targeting Robert Gates, then US defence secretary or Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But he made it clear Biden was to remain unharmed, so lowly did he rate the VP.

Bin Laden insisted that if Al Qaeda fighters came across a convoy of American, Afghan and NATO troops, “we should choose to ambush the American army vehicles, even though the American army vehicles have the least amount of soldiers.”

He explained, “The only time you are allowed to attack the other army vehicles is if those vehicles are going to attack our brothers.”

In the same undated letter, Bin Laden wrote, “We want to cut the tree at the root.

“The problem is that our strength is limited, so our best way to cut the tree is to concentrate on sawing the trunk of the tree.

“Here is an example- the mujahidin were able to cut the root of the Russian tree, and after that, all the branches fell off one after the other.”

In another missive written on October 21 2010, Bin Laden relished the economic problems hurting the West. He said America was in “big trouble” in Afghanistan and “their financial crisis continues.”

“Britain has lowered its defence budget and America is reducing the budget of the Pentagon. Anyone who knows the world and knows politics knows it is impossible for them to continue with the war,” he stated.

There were also two references to Britain in a letter dated April 26, 2011.

Addressed to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who became Al Qaeda’s number two after the death of his boss, Bin Laden claimed Britain was looking for a way out of Afghanistan “if Al Qaeda promised not to target their interests.”

The documents have been published by the Combating Terrorism Centre, a privately-funded research organisation based at the US Military Academy.

•Culled from dailymail.co.uk