Chilling Details
ABCNEWS has obtained photographs of pages of the manual, containing chilling details, for instance, on how to put small explosive charges in a cigarette, a pipe or lighter in order to maim a person.
     There also are drawings of simple land mines that could blow up a car and radio controlled devices that could be used to set off a whole truckload of explosives, like those used to take down U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998.
     Intelligence experts say the manual seems to lend weight to what they already suspected about bin Laden — that he has a broad, somewhat coordinated network of operatives.
     But they also say most of the information reportedly in the manual is fairly basic and available in books or online, and it would be no surprise the millionaire Saudi dissident would have had it assembled.
     “I don’t think this is a spectacular gold mine,” says Ken Katzman, a terrorism analyst at the Congressional Research Service who has not seen the document. “It just sounds like boiler plate training information.”
     “Its probably downloaded Internet information or material used by other groups,” says Katzman, referring to the USA Today account of the document, in which he is quoted. “The one thing that I would be looking for is a strategy document, and I really doubt that that’s written.”

Basic Stuff on the Internet
John Pike, an intelligence analyst at the non-profit Federation of American Scientists, says a wide variety of military training information is commonly available on the Internet, including U.S. Army training material.
     “Obviously some of the more sensitive information is not publicly available,” he says. “But you can go over to the Army training and doctrine link and they’ve got manuals that can bore you to tears in terms of, you know, on how to operate [an] M-9 grenade launcher, etc…”
     In fact, a visit to the U.S. Army’s Web site offers scores of publicly available field manuals on everything from conducting psychological operations to sniper training and how to install Claymore anti-personnel mines.
     Pike says it should be no surprise someone linked to bin Laden may have compiled such information.
     “Any military, paramilitary, armed struggle entity of any size is going to lay hands on training materials, right?”, says Pike. “As soon as it was suggested that they use CD-ROMs, it occurred to me, ‘of course, everybody else does. I mean you can get a little CD-ROM burner for what, $500 bucks?,’” he says.

Bin Laden’s Network
Intelligence sources say they believe Osama bin Laden paid for the terrorist manual, and that his people wrote it, in Arabic, and distributed hundreds of copies — on paper and on CD-ROM — to his operatives.
     On the front page is a dedication to bin Laden.
     U.S. intelligence officials suspect bin Laden, operating out of Afghanistan, works with cells of various terrorist groups across the Middle East and North Africa, from Pakistan to the Persian Gulf to Algeria.
     “Parts of these well-known groups are apparently gravitating to bin Laden, he’s sort of a patchwork,” says Katzman.
     Katzman says it’s unlikely such groups would have to rely on bin Laden for the information reportedly contained in the CD-ROMs. “It’s information they would already have.”
     But officials say what makes the manual disturbing is that the text is translated into Arabic, widely distributed, and contains simplifying diagrams so that even would-be terrorists with little education might be able to use the information.