CIA Director Mike Pompeo Says Osama Bin Laden's Porn Stash Won't Be Released

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said documents retrieved from the 2011 Navy Seal raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden would be released in "weeks"—with the exception of one particular part of the haul, his pornography stash.

In a wide-ranging interview on the anniversary of 9/11, Pompeo said told Fox News's Bret Baier: "There's some pornography, there's some copyrighted material. Everything other than those items will be released in the weeks ahead."

In the operation on his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan, U.S. special forces retrieved a wide-ranging stash of documents, including family letters, documents relating to Islamic history, and notes about the group's operations.

While these documents are considered operational, his porn collection is not, and will likely remain classified.

After his death, inquests were made into the final stages of the most wanted man in the world's life at the compound. Was he planning more attacks? Why was he not caught earlier? All of these questions remained at large. One thing that was clear, however, is that he was watching his collection on "modern electronically recorded video," or VHS, according to Reuters.

Michael Flynn, former chief of staff for President Donald Trump and ex-U.S. intelligence chief, revealed in 2016 that laptops seized from jihadists were filled with as much as 80 percent pornography, alongside videos of beheadings and other gruesome footage.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson in 2015 famously called male fighters from the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) "porn driven losers," men who have "low self-esteem and are unsuccessful with women."

One man, the founder of online jock news site BroBible, even petitioned the CIA to release the information under a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015. The CIA quickly shut him down. "We are not going to release these materials due to the nature of their contents," Jeffrey Anchukaitis, a spokesman for then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said at the time.

Pompeo instead said on Monday that it was imperative for the American public see the documents that matter to national security, in order to prevent another plot of the likes of 9/11, the worst attacks in U.S. history, leaving almost 3,000 people dead.

"Once we are sure that there's not classified material and that there's not things that we can't release, I want to make sure the world gets to see them so that we can have lots of hands touching them and making good judgments about how to make sure that we don't have a 9/11, that we don't have this kind of risk again," he said.

As the 9/11 anniversary passed, Al-Qaeda released an image of the burning Twin Towers with a picture of Bin Laden's son, Hamza, superimposed into one of the buildings. The jihadist group is lagging behind ISIS for the mantle of the global jihad and appears to be seeking a resurgence. It is increasingly using Hamza in its propaganda output because of his family lineage and experts say he is being groomed for the eventual leadership of the radical Islamist group.