Bin Laden Led al Qaeda From Hideout

Osama bin Laden spent the last five years of his life in just two rooms—he never stepped outside them, says one of his wives—and yet he was able to remain closely involved in al Qaeda business. Notes recovered from his compound show, for example, that he was involved in a plot to try to derail a U.S. train on a bridge on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. “He wasn’t just a figurehead,” one U.S. official tells The New York Times. “He continued to plot and plan, to come up with ideas about targets and to communicate those ideas to other senior Qaeda leaders.”