WASHINGTON — The House intelligence committee pressed the Obama administration on Friday to speed up the release of documents and other materials seized during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act called for a complete declassification review of the documents within 120 days. The documents from the May 2011 raid came from information on more than 100 thumb drives, hard drives, cellphones, paper files and other materials — enough to fill a “small college library,” Nunes wrote in a letter to intelligence officials, which his office released.
“Making the material widely available for public analysis will serve the public interest and help to demystify bin Laden and al-Qaida without compromising national security,” Nunes wrote.
Nunes sent the letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and Marcel Lettre, undersecretary of defense for intelligence. The letter calls for the materials to be quickly declassified wherever possible to give the public insight into al-Qaida’s operations and tradecraft.