Back in March, we linked to a Washington Post article that cited internal Al Qaeda memos seized at the home of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The memos in question focused on Al Qaeda’s media strategy, and famously said of Fox News “let her die in anger!”
This morning the Pentagon released a cache of documents seized from the compound, and TVNewser has obtained a translated copy of the media memo in question.
Among the new revelations: Al Qaeda considered going to the U.S. networks with an offer of an exclusive interview with Bin Laden, but decided against it, because “the channel that broadcast them, probably it would distort them somehow. This is accomplished by bringing analysts and experts that would interpret its meaning in the way they want it to be.” Another option proposed was recording an HD video message, and distributing it to all of the U.S. channels.
Also: Al Qaeda thought former CNN staffer Octavia Nasr worked for MSNBC (they also referred to her as “The Lebanese”), and they seemed to like Brian Ross and ABC News (“The channel is still proud for its interview with the Shaykh [Bin Laden”).
Al Qaeda also thought CNN’s English-language coverage was in the tank for the U.S. government, but praised its Arabic-language coverage: “Its Arabic version brings good and detailed reports about al-Sahab releases, with a lot of quotations from the original text. That means they copy directly from the releases or its gist.”
Read the full memo below, and we will keep looking through the documents.