Bin Laden's Last Words Go Online In letters from his last hideout, Osama bin Laden fretted about dysfunction in his terrorist network and crumbling trust from Muslims he wished to incite against their government and the West. A selection of documents seized in last year's raid on bin Laden's Pakistan house was posted online Thursday by the U.S. Army's Combating Terrorism Center. The documents show dark days for al-Qaida and its hunkered-down leader after years of attacks by the United States and what bin Laden saw as bumbling within his own organization and its terrorist allies. "I plan to release a statement that we are starting a new phase to correct (the mistakes) we made," bin Laden wrote in 2010. In doing so, we shall reclaim, God willing, the trust of a large segment of those who lost their trust in the jihadis. Until the end, bin Laden remained focused on attacking Americans and coming up with plots, however improbable, to kill U.S. leaders. He wished especially to target airplanes carrying Gen. David Petraeus and even President Barack Obama, reasoning that an assassination would elevate an "utterly unprepared" Vice President Joe Biden into the presidency and plunge the U.S. into crisis. But a U.S. analysts' report released along with bin Laden's correspondence describes him as upset over the inability of spinoff terrorist groups to win public support for their cause, their unsuccessful media campaigns and poorly planned plots that, in bin Laden's view, killed too many innocent Muslims. Bin Laden's inner circle also was frustrated when, in 2010, attention in the U.S. shifted to the weak economy without apparently crediting al-Qaida for the economic damage that terrorist attacks had caused. "All the political talk in America is about the economy, forgetting or ignoring the war and its role in weakening the economy," his spokesman, Adam Gadahn, wrote. Al-Qaida's relationship with Iran, a point of deep interest to the U.S. government, was rough, judging from the documents. After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, some top al-Qaida operatives and their families fled to Iran, where authorities there put them under house arrest. Over the years, Iran has released some, including members of bin Laden's family. Still, others remain. Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who became al-Qaida's No. 2 after bin Laden's death, complained bitterly about dealing with the Iranians and their Byzantine methods of negotiating. Al-Rahman was later killed in a U.S. drone strike. "The criminals did not send us any letter, nor did they send us a message through any of the brothers," al-Rahman wrote. Such behavior is of course not unusual for them; indeed, it is typical of their mindset and method. They do not wish to appear to be negotiating with us or responding to our pressures. Bin Laden himself wrote that "controlling children" was one of the keys to hiding in cities, as he did for years while U.S. forces searched Pakistan's rugged frontier. He encouraged his followers in hiding to teach their children the local language and not let them out of their homes "except for extreme necessity like medical care."