Analyst: Bin Laden was living like a prisoner
Newly-surfaced video of the villa where Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces and had been in hiding for several years show conditions so Spartan it's "a little bit like he was under house arrest" and was virtually "a prisoner," according to CBS News National Security Analyst Juan Zarate.
The video, says CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, was probably shot secretly by a Pakistani security official.
Zarate told "Early Show on Saturday Morning" co-anchor Rebecca Jarvis the Obama administration "clearly" wants bin Laden's death "to be the start of a push to go after al Qaeda leadership. Not just in Pakistan, but around the world.
Special Section: The Killing of Osama bin Laden
"And so, you're going to see a push to hit key figures like Anwar al-Awlaki, the anti-American cleric in Yemen (who was targeted by a drone attack this week that missed him but killed two other people), and perhaps others. So, we should expect in the coming days, especially with this treasure trove of documents (found in bin Laden's lair) to see follow-on actions in the weeks and months to come."
Zarate cautioned that he doesn't "think we are at a point where we're (taking action on) the information we're getting out of these documents. I think in the first instance, officials are looking for any information about attack plotting, names of Western operatives. You've seen the warnings with respect to the train systems in the West. And so that's the kind of thing that they're looking for first. I think, slowly but surely, the analysts will start picking apart the data with names, addresses, phone numbers, that will then lead to other trails, and will ultimately lead to actions against other al Qaeda leaders."
Zarate observed, "One of the things that surprised me (in viewing the video) is, with bin Laden having been in this compound for about five, maybe six years, it's a little bit like he was under house arrest. He was really a prisoner, in a sense, in this compound. And so, what we may be looking at is a dimension of the prison that he was in for about five years there in Abbottabad."
