[no audio] good afternoon. Welcome to fdd, the foundation for defense of democracies. Im the founder and president. Im pleased to welcome you today to our conversation, understanding al qaeda through a massive trove of Osama Bin Ladens files. In may of 2011 committee Navy Seal Team went to pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden. They had a second mission. To take as much information as they could from his compound. We should learn a huge amount of information we didnt because it was under lock and key. Lobbyists and pressures to weease information are given an advance look by who said this information should be available to scholars and journalists and others. With that, im pleased to hand the conversation over to our moderator, kimberly dozier, whos had a distinguished career reporting on intelligence and National Security issues. She covered the war in iraq in 2003 and was wounded in a car bombing in 2006. Todays event will be live streamed. I encourage guests here and online to join in todays conversation on twitter, fdd. I will ask you to please silence your phones. Thank you for a much. Thank you very much. Today, we have with us three of the practitioners of the dark art of delving into everything al qaeda. Have bill, founder of the longboard journal. The New York Times specialist on al qaeda, and Foreign Correspondent and former ap veteran. I asked him to bring out this notebook. We will start broad but get pretty granular about this stuff pretty fast. We will chat for 45 minutes amongst ourselves and then open it up to questions from you all. With that, i will start with the broad question. Why did it take so long, tom, to release these documents . Tores definitely releasing anything. That is the medias job, to push for transparency. Of these issues and the complexity of the 9 11 wars, transparency helps inform the public. The u. S. May not have largescale deployments in the countries, but we are still deployed in several areas. We are fighting mostly through the air more countries now than ever. Understanding the enemy is crucial for understanding the efficacy of these policies and understanding our enemy. What better way to see it then through the eyes of Osama Bin Laden. Bill and i started fighting to release these files in may of 2012. The Obama White House put out 17 files from this massive trove. Bill and i are sitting there thinking, ok, we will get all these goodies today. All that comes out our 17 files. The narrative was al qaeda was on the decline, everything was going poorly mother was no cohesion to this international network. Bin laden had little control over all of this. That narrative we knew immediately was totally wrong. It was a cherry picked version of what was going on. We can prove it is wrong based on the file even with the 17 files that came out and we can prove its wrong. The only way we will put this issue to rest is to get everything released it began with a simple question. What role did Osama Bin Laden play in al qaeda on the day he was killed . What was he doing . Twoan you describe the transcripts . Files, it was a mix. We had some information on the communications with the pakistani taliban. One of the first files, the somali file was in the first batch etter thatas a l was an attachment to another letter that wasnt released. In 2010ually reported that he ordered them to secure their ties with al qaeda. That they wereas concerned about getting having the aid cut off because there was a lot of famine in somalia at the time. They wanted to keep the International Coalition coalescing and coming in and attacking it is an al qaeda branch. In one of the files, there was the confirmation that was in the first batch. We have seen more information on that. It was a smattering of information in various different areas. We have to understand about these files, we are looking at one or two communications in a long string of communication. It was cherry picked. It has the feeling of, all right, they put out this piece, there was information on iranal qaeda ties. When you look at that, the argument was made, this shows ties actually, we see some indication that there are. It was a mix of information in that first batch. 17 files was not enough to draw any type of concrete conclusions, which were made at that time. , between then and now describe what was just released in terms of size and scope. 110,000 files. s theres another 300,000 software files. 470,000 total files. Reports, reports on al qaeda in iraq at the time, which eventually became the Islamic State, communication and forth, bin ladens personal journal, videos of bin laden,s family videos in their theres family videos in there. They didnt just seize bin ladens laptop, they seized everything that was used. We have seen communications about the pakistani taliban. We really only scratched the surface. s digital life. His digital life. And his families as well. The difference between the First Release and the second release, why do you think the Obama Administration was holding those documents back . I can only speak to my own reporting. Killed, iin laden was was the west Africa Bureau chief for ap. I was based in senegal but i covered the region. Six month later, a branch of al aqim, took over the northern half of mali. It was an enormous territory. Diplomats at the embassy and , the narrative i would malis that this group in was not connected to al qaeda. And had opportunistically taken the al qaeda name to have prestige and scare people and in fact that people were just criminals, drug dealers kidnapping people for ransom. These were not the al qaeda droids youre looking for. French fleshed out this group. I was among the group of reporters that got two timbuktu. The buildings had been occupied by this terror group. I started collecting the thousands of documents they had left behind. I worked with a translator for the next year. Whichly, my worldview, had been informed by officials, that started to fall apart. Among the documents i was finding in mali was a disciplinary letter from al qaeda reprimanding a commander who had negotiated the ransom of a canadian hostage on his own without consulting al qaeda central. 2008. As going back to suddenly, i was seeing this group i was told really had no connection was in fact being micromanaged by al qaeda central. When the first set of documents came out, if you read them carefully with this knowledge in mind, you can find evidence of this micromanaging. In the letters from al qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula come you see them giving each other instructions my guidance, etc. The overall narrative that was being pushed to the press, if you look at the editorials that were done, an image of bin laden isolated, he had lost control of this group one of the headlines describing him was a lion in winter. The new trove confirms what i was seeing in mali, which is not tissue,l connective but connective tissue to the point of being micromanaged. Very minor personal decisions are being decided by the Group Thousands of miles away. To you think that that was something kept from the publics view because it revealed that there had to become indication going back and forth which means u. S. Intelligence was missing this . Think back to bin laden was killed, and was right before a Major Campaign season. Thent want to underplay role that the killing of Osama Bin Laden had. That was the rice into something much bigger. The head of the organization had been killed. These are quotes i would get the organization has been decimated, the organization is in disarray. The organization is on the run, right . At the same time that we were preparing to pull out troops itm iraq and afghanistan, was important to portray this as a problem that no longer existed. Tom, you all badgered two administrations, you got mike pompeo to release information, why did it come from the cia and dni . There are accusations that witho released this political motivations in mind. Question back there and he started blending me with signs and documents. Blinding me with signs and documents. Our role in this started with the reasons you just outlined. What is the structure look like . We wanted the files out to answer these questions. Come i didnt know who he was when we started advocating to release the stuff. Sayingainly heard us this stuff has to be released. Commerce been devin nunes fought to have this stuff released as well. Congressman devin nunes fought to have this stuff released as well. I laughed when i saw this allegation its not controversial at all that there is this tie. The Obama Administration, their treasury and state departments over the course of five years issued numerous terrorist designations citing the connections between the Iranian Regime and al qaeda that allowed al qaeda to maintain a core facilitation pipeline inside iran. What i was showing kim, look, i dont need the bin laden files. All i would have to do is point to what the Obama Administration said. This is a Treasury Department terrorist designation. This goes through a rigorous process. Citing Firm Intelligence to make this designation going back to 2011. Start by saying that the Treasury Department was targeting al qaedas keep funding and support Network Using iran is a critical transit point. The talk about uncovering secret deal between iran and al qaeda. December of 2011 this is after the raid. Parts of the u. S. Government are using the bin laden files to justify terrorist designations while other parts are putting their head in the sand and him want to hear it dont want to hear it. This is the state department in 2011. They offer an award for a major al qaeda facilitator. They say he is operating under an agreement between al qaeda and the iranian government. We can go on like this for the next eight hours. This issue ofto iranal qaeda but they do have an agreement. They fight each other in syria and yemen and elsewhere. [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] unfortunately, we are having at thechnical issues foundation for defense of emocracies. We are working to correct the problem did we hope to return to live coverage in just a moment. Thats we are working to correct the problem. We are working to correct the problem. We hope to return to live coverage in just a moment. [no audio] once again, having technical issues with our signal from the foundation for defense of and their discussion on the documents that were collected during the raid on Osama Bin Ladens compound in pakistan. We hope to return to live coverage on cspan. A look at thee, discussion on republicans and the Affordable Care act. Inues. Austin,ining us from texas, is president of the foundation for research on equal alsotunity, avik roy, contributor to forbes magazine, and former policy adviser to three president ial candidates. Are here to talk about the Affordable Care act. Thank you for joining us. If the Senate Republicans want to include in the tax reform bill repeal of the individual mandate. What do you think about that idea . Guest i think it makes a lot of sense. One thing you have to remember about the individual mandate is it has played an outside role in the fiscal debates about both replacing obamacare and tax of courts and the way washington works. The Congressional Budget Office believes that if you repeal the millional mandate, 16 were 13llion people million is the latest estimate, they would drop out of the Insurance Market because they would not be forced to pay a fine if they do not sign appeared because cbo believes this, all these massive fiscal savings that come from including the individual mandate in tax reform, and the Supreme Court famously in 2012 ruled that the individual mandate is a tax, and that is a big part why it is compatible with this legislation before the senate now. Host what does the individual mandate do, and what has been the impact of it . Guest great question. Under obamacare or the Affordable Care act, what the individual mandate does is it says you are required to buy Health Insurance, which is defined under obamacare with certain criterion in terms of what kinds of insurance qualify for that. There are certain exemptions it if your income is below the or if youne roughly do not file income taxes, you do not have to. There are other loopholes and exemptions. Broadly, most people are required to buy Health Insurance either from their employer, medicare, medicaid, or on their we just 695fine, a year or 2. 5 of your adjusted gross income, whichever is greater. So he gets larger as you go up the income scale. Host what has been the end cap the impact on the cost of health care and on the Health Care Industry . Guest another great question. In terms of the real word, the view is that the individual mandate has had almost no effect. There was a paper published by jonathan gruber, one of the people consider the architect of obamacare, a few years ago in a journal saying there is no evidence of the individual mandate is having an effect in terms of encouraging people to sign up for coverage. Lot more people, particularly at the lower end of the income coverage at a buy discounted rate because of federal subsidies. The realworld effect is minimal. In theory, the hope was, the reason why democrats enacted the individual mandate in the first place is because the way obamacares regulations work is a doubled or tripled the cost of Health Insurance for younger healthier people in order to make health in we will leave this segment. We go live back to the foundation for defense of democracies and there have been on the documents collected by special forces in a raid of bin ladens compound. One of the things we have heard in the post bin laden era is that much of their work has been decks mad decimated. From what you have read in the files and the sophistications you are describing, how do you think they are operating now . Al qaeda . Has it changed . Is he using some of the same things . We know they are still fighting in afghanistan. The Obama Administration narrative from the cia and the Defense Department officials, al qaeda is decimated. The number of fighters remained constant. The binthout having , they wereents launching attacks and issuing press releases on al qaeda members being killed in afghanistan. One raid killed 50 guys. Fightersnow 55 in afghanistan0 50 fighters in afghanistan . The other thing the Defense Department intelligence said was al qaeda is combining provinces in northeast afghanistan, minimal presence outside of there. They killed around 200 al qaeda fighters in this one area. 100,e are at you do the math. Al qaeda formed a branch in the india subcontinent. They responded to some of the losses they incurred during the Drone Campaign. It is clear, the bin laden files indicate they were taking losses and they were hurting. They are moving operatives in afghanistan and identify provinces where they would be safe. They are sticking to places with security that is challenged, remote locations, places where they can blend in. With the Friendly Forces operating there, difficult for American Forces to operate. Reports, al press qaeda has a Large Network i never believed bin laden was hiding in a cave. Does anybody want to take it back ta bet . Think you are midsized city in central pakistan. We have friends from the Pakistani Embassy here. Pick a city like that. In studying what you have been able to study so far, what has been your takeaway . Super interesting communication between al qaeda central and this group that had been portrayed as a bunch of criminals in mali. Aqim. For example, there is a letter regarding these two tunisians two austrian tourists who were kidnapped in tunisia circa 2008. I have gone to austria to interview this couple. They were there with their two german shepherds. Did notaeda affiliate want to waste the bullets, so they beat them to death. He woman could barely talk she spent the whole interview crying. I had spoken to a negotiator who had gone into the desert to negotiate their release. Was less than a year. I was seeing her in 2014. She couldnt conduct the interview without crying, right . She was clearly like a wounded she was clearly like a wounded person that had been changed by this. He was more sanguine. The these are physical letters. The perception is these are being handcarried from the deserts of Northern Africa across these oceans all the way over to pakistan. Committed to million euro ransom is not that much compared to what aqim would later get. Euro ransom ison not that much compared to what aqim would later get. Africa, and a group in it had a different name, and pledged allegiance to al qaeda in 20062007. Theres a letter where he is going over the charter for the Al Qaeda Group in africa, giving ands on their bylines saying article 16, you should phrase that a little more differently, article whatever, you should do it this way. The most intrusive editor in the world. Suggestions he stating whatticle their goal was going to be in africa was initially formulated to take it would be jihad against the algerian regime. He gently says i think you would be better positioned to say this is a more global thing.