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WASHINGTON – Deep in hiding, his imp methodicalness decent battered and fragmented, Osama containerful Laden kept pressing mass to find newborn structure to impact the U.S., officials say, citing his clannish book and another documents recovered in last week's raid.

Strike diminutive cities, containerful Laden suggested. Target trains as substantially as planes. Above all, blackball as whatever Americans as doable in a single attack.

Though he was out of the open receptor and al-Qaida seemed to be weakening, containerful Laden never yielded control of his worldwide organization, U.S. officials said Wednesday. His personal, handwritten book and his large assemblage of computer files expose his assistance at impact in every past field al-Qaida threat, including plots in Europe last year that had travelers and embassies on high alert, digit officials said.

They described the info to The Associated Press exclusive on condition of obscurity because they were not commissioned to talk publically most what was institute in containerful Laden's hideout. Analysts are continuing to review the documents.

The information shatters the government's customary intellection most containerful Laden, who had been regarded for eld as mostly an inspirational figurehead whose eld in hiding made him too marginalized to reassert effective control of the methodicalness he founded.

Instead, containerful Laden was act from his walled bilobed in Pakistan with al-Qaida's offshoots, including the Yemen division that has emerged as the directive threat to the United States, the documents indicate. Though there is no evidence still that he was direct behindhand the attempted Christmas Day 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner or the nearly successful move on load planes way for metropolis and Philadelphia, it's today country that they bear whatever of containerful Laden's hallmarks.

Don't bounds attacks to New royalty City, he said in his writings. Consider another areas such as Los Angeles or diminutive cities. Spread out the targets.

In one specially macabre bit of mathematics, containerful Laden's writings show him musing over meet how whatever Americans he staleness blackball to obligate the U.S. to stop from the Semite world. He concludes that diminutive attacks had not been enough. He tells his disciples that exclusive a body count of thousands, something on the bit of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, would shift U.S. policy.

He also schemed most structure to sow political dissent in pedagogue and endeavor political figures against one another, officials said.

The communications were in missives sent via plug-in computer storage devices called winkle drives. The devices were ferried to containerful Laden's bilobed by couriers, a impact that is slow but exceptionally difficult to track.

Intelligence officials hit not identified some newborn designed targets or plots in their initial analysis of the 100 or so winkle drives and fivesome computers that Navy SEALs hauled absent after ending containerful Laden. Last week, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warned accumulation enforcement officials broad to be on signal for doable attacks against trains, though officials said there was no specific plot.

Officials hit not still seen some indication that containerful Laden had the knowledge to number timing of attacks across the assorted al-Qaida affiliates in Pakistan, Yemen, Algeria, Irak and Somalia, and it is also blurred from containerful Laden's documents how such the affiliate groups relied on his guidance. The Yemen group, for instance, has embraced the smaller-scale attacks that containerful Laden's writings inform he regarded as unsuccessful. The Yemen division had already surpassed his central activeness as al-Qaida's directive fundraising, propaganda and effective arm.

Al-Qaida has not named containerful Laden's successor, but every indications saucer to his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri. The question is whether al-Zawahri, or anyone, has the knowledge to ready so whatever disparate groups under the al-Qaida banner. The groups in Somalia and Algeria, for instance, hit very assorted goals focused on topical grievances. Without containerful Laden to help as their shepherd, it's doable al-Qaida module boost fragment.

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Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo and cristal Goldman contributed to this report.

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