Documents from Osama bin Laden’s compound, declassified Wednesday by the Director of National Intelligence, include a jarringly ordinary job application used by al-Qaida.
The application, which asks potential al-Qaida recruits for their age and level of education, then goes on to ask much more jihad-themed questions. Some of those include, as excerpted from the DNI’s Englishtranslation:
“Do any of your family or friends work with the government? If so, would he/she be willing to cooperate with or help us?”
“List the types of passports you possess. Did you use a real or forged passport for your current travel?”
“Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?”
And, “Who should we contact in case you became a martyr?”
The documents, all translated into English, provide a rare public look into al-Qaida’s day-to-day operations while bin Laden was in hiding in Pakistan. (RELATED: Bin Laden’s Secret Stash Included 9/11 Truthers, Delta Force Video Game)
Those operations including a reassuringly inept facility with Microsoft Word. A scan of the Arabic original contains formatting errors that are common among casual users of the software.
That Bin Laden job application has a typical Microsoft Word flaw: putting chart headers right above the line break pic.twitter.com/3bBOh20Ros
— Ivan Plis (@ivanplis) May 20, 2015
This cutesy formatting, with the watermark and the line falling out of the box, is all too much #binladensbookshelf pic.twitter.com/lzxlz1oa6s
— Ivan Plis (@ivanplis) May 20, 2015
The header also instructs applicants to “please write clearly and legibly.”
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