Bin Laden's 'chilling' plot to kill President Obama

At the time of his death, Osama bin Laden was trying to devise ways to shoot down Obama's plane — and leave a presumably flummoxed Joe Biden in command

Osama bin Laden, 1998
(Image credit: Mike Stewart/Sygma/Corbis)

Up until his death last May, Osama bin Laden was hoping to pull off his most audacious attack since Sept. 11, 2001: the assassination of President Obama. Or so says a report by David Ignatius in The Washington Post. What's unclear is how he hoped to organize such a long-shot scheme given his relative isolation in Pakistan. Soon-to-be-declassified documents seized by the U.S. commando team that killed bin Laden indicate that the al Qaeda leader was still commanding his terrorist network from his walled hideout in Abbottabad, even though it sometimes took months for him to receive replies from his subordinates. Here, a brief guide to the new revelations:

What was bin Laden doing to target Obama?

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