New Details on Bin Laden Documents?

Two quick notes on recent reports possibly related to documents seized from the Bin Laden compound.

First, during a recent hearing in the Bradley Manning case, military prosecutors stated, according to the N.Y. Times account, "that they would introduce evidence that Osama bin Laden requested and received from a Qaeda member some of the State Department cables and military reports that Private Manning is accused of passing to Wikileaks." This presumably is based on material seized from Bin Laden's home and is part of the prosecution's strategy for supporting its charge of aiding the enemy.

Second, earlier this month there were reports that the Pakistani commission known as the "Abbottabad Commission" that had been examining the May 2011 raid that killed Bin Laden finally completed its long-delayed report, which reportedly runs to 700 pages. In conducting its investigation the Abbottabad Commission reportedly (see earlier coverage here) had access to some 187,000 documents recovered from the compound that appeared to be separate from the documents seized by U.S forces. The Commission's report is unfortunately not yet available publicly and it is unclear when, or if, it will be.

We'll see whether either of these developments ultimately results in new information or disclosures about seized documents from Abbottabad.