Mediaboss Marketing

Among the last known images of Osama bin Laden is a video seized at his compound the night he was killed, which shows the al-Qaeda leader hunched before a television screen studying a video of himself. Its testimony to bin Ladens obsession with the media side of his war against the United States.

This modern face of bin Ladens jihad comes through clearly in a 21-page letter from his media adviser, an American-born jihadist named Adam Gadahn. The letter is undated, but it appears to have been written after November 2010, in the last six months of bin Ladens life.

David Ignatius

Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

Archive

Gadahn wrote much as if he were a media planner corresponding with a client. He included suggestions about the timing of video appearances after the 2010 U.S. midterm elections and use of high-definition video, and made snarky evaluations of major American networks.

As I wrote last week, Gadahn hated Fox News (falls into the abyss); he liked MSNBC but complained about the firing of Keith Olbermann; he had mixed feelings about CNN (better in Arabic than in English) and made flattering comments about CBS and ABC. Basically, he wanted to play them all off to al-Qaedas best advantage. He also mentioned print journalists, most prominently Robert Fisk of The Independent of Britain. He cites three Americans (Brian Russ, Simon Hirsh and Jerry Van Dyke), though its uncertain whom he meant.

The media guidance was among the documents taken from bin Ladens compound the night of May 2. It was made available to me, along with a small sample of other documents in the cache, by a senior Obama administration official.

Gadahns memo shows an organization struggling to stay on the media offensive despite devastating American attacks. Its partly aspirational, with dreams of jihad, but theres a core of sharp self-criticism that makes clear that Gadahn, like his boss, understood that al-Qaeda was losing its war.

Gadahn even worried that al-Qaedas reversals in Iraq and elsewhere represented punishment by God on us because of our sins and injustices. Like bin Laden, he was deeply upset that al-Qaedas affiliates had killed so many Muslims and listed 13 operations that showed the tragedy of tolerating the spilling of (Muslim) blood.

Read more:
How al-Qaeda tried to control the media