Despite having no Internet access in his hideout, Osama bin Laden was a prolific email writer who built a painstaking system that kept him one step ahead of the U.S. government's best eavesdroppers.
His methods, described in new detail to The Associated Press by a counterterrorism official and a second person briefed on the U.S. investigation, served him well for years and frustrated Western efforts to trace him through cyberspace. The arrangement allowed bin Laden to stay in touch worldwide without leaving any digital fingerprints behind.
The people spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence analysis.
Bin Laden's system was built on discipline and trust. But it also left behind an extensive archive of email exchanges for the U.S. to scour. The trove of electronic records pulled out of his compound after he was killed last week is revealing thousands of messages and potentially hundreds of email addresses, the AP has learned.
Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.
At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden's message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.
It was a slow, toilsome process. And it was so meticulous that even veteran intelligence officials have marveled at bin Laden's ability to maintain it for so long. The U.S. always suspected bin Laden was communicating through couriers but did not anticipate the breadth of his communications as revealed by the materials he left behind.
Navy SEALs hauled away roughly 100 flash memory drives after they killed bin Laden, and officials said they appear to archive the back-and-forth communication between bin Laden and his associates around the world.
Al-Qaida operatives are known to change email addresses, so it's unclear how many are still active since bin Laden's death. But the long list of electronic addresses and phone numbers in the emails is expected to touch off a flurry of national security letters and subpoenas to Internet service providers. The Justice Department is already coming off a year in which it significantly increased the number of national security letters, which allow the FBI to quickly demand information from companies and others without asking a judge to formally issue a subpoena.
Officials gave no indication that bin Laden was communicating with anyone inside the U.S., but terrorists have historically used U.S.-based Internet providers or free Internet-based email services.
The cache of electronic documents is so enormous that the government has enlisted Arabic speakers from around the intelligence community to pore over it. Officials have said the records revealed no new terror plot but showed bin Laden remained involved in al-Qaida's operations long after the U.S. had assumed he had passed control to his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.
The files seized from bin Laden's compound not only have the potential to help the U.S. find other al-Qaida figures, they may also force terrorists to change their routines. That could make them more vulnerable to making mistakes and being discovered.
(AP)
<관련 한글 기사>
빈라덴, 어떻게 추적 피해 이메일 보냈나
오사마 빈 라덴이 사살된 직후 그가 수년간 숨어지냈던 파키스탄의 은신처에서는 수백개의 이메일 주소를 통해 수천개의 메시지를 주고받았다는 사실을 보여주는 대규모의 전자정보 기록이 발견됐다.
인터넷은 물론 전화선조차 연결하지 않은 채 은둔생활을 했던 그가 어떻게 이메일을 보낼 수 있었던 것일까.
익명을 요구한 미 대(對) 테러 분야 관리 등에 따르면 훈련과 신뢰를 기반으로 구축한 메시지 전달 시스템이 이를 가능하게 했다.
빈 라덴은 은신처에 있는 자신의 컴퓨터로 작성한 메시지를 휴대용 저장장치인 USB(플래시 메모리 드라이브)에 저장한 뒤 믿을만한 연락책에게 넘겼다. 그러면 연락책은 은신처에서 멀리 떨어진 인터넷카페로 가서 빈 라덴의 메시지를 복사해 이메일에 옮겨놓고 전송했다.
연락책이 다시 순서를 거꾸로 해서 이메일을 받아 복사한 뒤 USB에 저장, 은신처로 되돌아가면 빈 라덴이 자신의 메시지를 오프라인으로 확인하는 방식이었다.
이번 사살 작전을 수행한 `네이비 실'이 그의 은신처에서 수거한 USB는 대략 100개에 이른다.
느리고 고생을 해야 하는 과정이었지만 미 정부 최고 전문가들의 추적을 오랜기간 피해갈 만큼 치밀한 것이었다. 베테랑 정보 관리들조차 빈 라덴이 이같은 시스템을 그토록 오래 유지할 수 있었다는 데 경탄할 정도다.
미국은 항상 빈 라덴이 연락책을 통해 외부와 교신할 것이라고 의심했지만 이같이 폭넓은 방식을 이용했을 것이라고는 예상하지 못했다.
알-카에다 조직원들은 이메일 주소를 바꾸는 것으로 알려져 있다. 따라서 빈 라덴 사후 얼마나 많은 이메일 계정이 작동하고 있는지 불확실하다.
그러나 이번에 발견된 이메일에서 수많은 전자주소와 전화번호가 나온 만큼 미 정부가 정보 확보를 위해 인터넷 서비스 공급자들에 국가안보비밀소환장(national security letters. NSLs)과 소환장을 보낼 것으로 예상되고 있다.
관리들은 빈 라덴이 미국 내 누군가와 연락을 주고받은 징후는 없다고 하지만 테러리스트들은 과거부터 미국의 인터넷 서비스 및 무료 이메일을 사용해왔다
(연합뉴스)
