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CIA analyzing information seized from bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, CIA agents could unlock new clues as intelligence analysts start to review the materials captured at the terror lord’s Pakistan compound during the raid, officials said today.

Along with bin Laden’s body, electronics and hard drives were seized by U.S. forces following the firefight on Sunday afternoon.

The information has started to arrive at the CIA’s Virginia headquarters, officials told Fox News Channel.

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The officials described the cache as “volume of materials” that will be “exploited and analyzed” at CIA headquarters.

It remains unclear what kinds of information the files might contain.

Intelligence officials spent years tracking the threads of information that eventually led them to the courier that led them to bin Laden’s compound. But officials have said the successful mission is only one step in the ongoing fight against al Qaeda and its terror network.

A source told CBS News that a top priority continues to be the dismantlement of al Qaeda’s core.

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US officials are turning their focus to the elimination of Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden’s second in command, and other senior operative planners who pose a threat to western interests.

“They got bin Laden but not the keys to the kingdom,” the source told CBS.

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, without going into detail, said that analysts are in the process of reviewing the materials they obtained on site, to determine the next step.

“We feel as though this is a very important time to … take advantage of the steps of yesterday and to continue to work to break the back of al Qaeda,” he said.

Asked about the cache of evidence, he said: “It’s not necessarily quantity. Frequently, it’s quality.”

Brennan said he hopes the U.S. can also “take advantage” of this moment and convince people in the region that Al Qaeda is a thing of the past.

“We’re hoping to bury the rest of al Qaeda along with bin Laden,” he said.

CBS News reported that over the last months, analysts have picked up “threads of threats” and since bin Laden’s death they have continued to pick up pieces of of information mostly involving transportation but the information remains “murky.”

Meanwhile, a top White House official said it was “inconceivable” that bin Laden had not had a support system to help him inside Pakistan, but he declined to speculate if there had been any official Pakistani aid.

John Brennan, President Obama’s top counter terrorism adviser, also told reporters that the US commandos on the raid had been ready to take the al Qaeda leader alive if that had been possible.

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Meanwhile, Pakistan’s envoy to Britain said today that the operation to hunt down bin Laden involved both Pakistan and the United States.

It showed that the two countries’ intelligence agencies were cooperating with each other, said High Commissioner (ambassador) Wajid Shamsul Hasan told Reuters.

“It is a joint operation, secretly collaborated, professionally carried out and satisfactorily ended,” he said.

“Yesterday’s operation has belied all the allegations in the past that the CIA and ISI were not cooperating and that there was a rift between the CIA and the ISI,” he said.

Bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan, ending a nearly 10-year worldwide manhunt for the leader of the global Islamist militant network that orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

Asked if the subject of the operation had been discussed during a visit to Washington last month by ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Hasan said: “I’m sure it must have been.”

With Fox News