Why Mike Pompeo Released More bin Laden Files

In January, the intelligence community announced the end of a 30-month project to de-classify the documents recovered from Osama bin Laden’s lair in Abbottabad, Pakistan. While the documents, grabbed by the U.S. commandos who killed the long-hunted leader of al-Qaeda in 2011, contained more chaff than wheat—duplicate records, widely available literature, and more than enough pornography to make a supposedly pious sheikh blush—they also yielded invaluable intelligence on the group’s structure, capabilities, and intentions.

The de-classification effort, which involved teams of intelligence officers sifting through millions of pages to determine what could be released without compromising sensitive sources or methods, produced reams of information that the intelligence community recognized Americans had a right to know about a group that had killed nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens on 9/11. I’m all for such transparency (I on the subject). And this effort was personal for me; I was a CIA counterterrorism analyst when bin Laden was killed and was serving on the National Security Council staff when the intelligence community assured the White House—and, in turn, the public—that all of the bin Laden files of significant public interest and suitable for de-classification had been released.