WORRIES

Bin Laden: Al Qaeda on Decline

Emails show concern over drones, Arab Spring.

Intelligence recovered from Osama bin Laden’s house revealed that the Qaeda leader had been worried about the future of the terrorist network. Emails show bin Laden was concerned about U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, and he complained that he was losing the “espionage war” and did not have enough money to launch a counterintelligence effort. Months before the Arab Spring, bin Laden told affiliates in Yemen that it was too soon to create an Islamic state and there wasn’t “enough steel” in Al Qaeda’s regional network even to take the early steps. The emails were part of a massive trove of intel that the CIA has been parsing since bin Laden’s death on May 2.