Bin Laden Raid Yields Treasure Trove Of Data

Computers, thumb drives and paper records recovered from the compound where Osama bin Laden met his death are being hailed as the mother lode of intelligence.

Thousands of documents recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan could help the U.S. destroy al-Qaida, U.S. officials told NBC News.

Another anonymous government official told Politico, It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable.

During the attack on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan - just two hours' drive north of Islamabad, the capital - bin Laden was killed. In the aftermath, the soldiers went through the compound d and picked up computers, portable drives, and paper records.

CNN cited a senior U.S. official and said that 10 hard drives, five computers and more than 100 storage devices were found. No U.S. officials have detailed what might be in the records, or whether it was encrypted.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday that the information included evidence of planned attacks, leads on finding other high-value targets and what allowed bin Laden to live in the compound for as long as he did.

John Brennan, President Barack Obama's chief counterterrorism coordinator, said the material could give valuable insights into Al-Qaeda's network.

Encrypted information would be much more difficult, though not impossible, to extract from the drives and computers found at bin Laden's compound.

Bin Laden was the 54-year-old founder of Al-Qaeda, the Islamist network that killed more than 3,000 people in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.