National Geographic's upcoming documentary about the founder of Al-Qaeda*, Osama bin Laden, will explore a rather unconventional theory explaining why the radical Islamic preacher had a vast collection of pornographic materials in his last hideout in Pakistan, where he was killed by US SEALs in May 2011. The documentary, called Bin Laden’s Hard Drive and which is scheduled to be released in full on 10 September, suggests that the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks might not have had these videos to watch them, but used them to carry out his sinister operations by encoding secret messages and orders in the salacious video files.
According to the documentary, citing the terrorist's letters, bin Laden distrusted emails and their encryption methods, fearing that his orders to subordinates could be intercepted. He sent messages to his acolytes using couriers, but it may be possible that these orders were not written on paper, but, ironically, embedded in content deemed sinful according to the terrorist number one's own ideology, the documentary suggested.
The same documentary, however, admits that certain aspects of bin Laden's life cast doubt on this theory. The terrorist shared his last hideout with at least 22 other people, any one of whom could have gathered the pornographic collection, which the US authorities have refused to release to the public, but that they called "fairly extensive". No details are available that could hint at the type of adult content the terrorist had purportedly hoarded.
Reid Meloy, a CIA expert cited by the makers of the documentary, in turn, suggested that one should not think of bin Laden as an Islamic fundamentalist to the point of ignoring his own biological or other needs. Meloy opined that the terrorist number one was, in the end, just a human and despite his righteous condemnation of "Western sins", he might have, at times, watched salacious materials himself. In this light, the collection of pornographic materials might only have served the purpose of entertaining bin Laden and was not helping him organise another deadly terrorist attack.
*Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia