The compound in Pakistan where US forces killed Osama bin Laden was an "active command and control centre", a senior US intelligence official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said information recovered from the raid on bin Laden's compound represented the largest trove of intelligence ever obtained from a single terrorism suspect.
"This compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control centre for al-Qaeda's top leader and it's clear ... that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group," the official said. "He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions."
The official released five video clips of bin Laden taken from the compound, most of them showing the al-Qaeda leader evidently rehearsing for some of the videotape messages he occasionally distributed to his followers.
One video segment, however, showed a gray-bearded bin Laden wrapped in a blanket and apparently wearing a ski cap while reviewing video images of himself in different settings.
It was not clear where the videos had been taped, but an initial assessment indicated one clip may have been recorded at the compound.
"The materials reviewed over the past several days clearly show that bin Laden remained an active leader in al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group," the official said. "He was far from a figurehead. He was an active player, making the recent operation even more essential for our nation's security."
Meanwhile, bin Laden may have lived in Pakistan for over seven years before being shot dead by US forces, senior Pakistani security officials said today.
One of bin Laden's widows told Pakistani investigators that the world's most wanted man stayed in a village for nearly two and a half years before moving to the nearby garrison town of Abbottabad, where he was killed.
The wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, told investigators earlier that bin Laden and his family had spent five years in Abbottabad, before one of the world's most elaborate and expensive manhunts ended.
"Amal (bin Laden's wife) told investigators that they lived in a village in Haripur district for nearly two and a half years before moving to Abbottabad at the end of 2005," one of the security officials said.
Abdulfattah, along with two other wives and several children, were among 15-16 people detained by Pakistani authorities at the compound after the raid.
Pakistan, heavily dependent on billions of dollars of US aid, is under heavy pressure to explain how bin Laden could have spent so many years undetected a few hours drive from its intelligence headquarters in the capital.
Suspicions have deepened that Pakistan's pervasive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have had ties with bin Laden - or at least some of its agents did.
Pakistan has dismissed such suggestions and says it has paid the highest price in terms of human life and money supporting the US war on militancy launched after bin Laden's followers staged the September 11th, 2001, attacks on America.
Pakistani leaders were already facing a staggering number of problems before revelations that bin Laden was in their backyard for years raised new questions about their commitment to fighting militancy.
Taliban militants will remain a major security threat despite several military offensives against their bases in the forbidding mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The economy is stagnant and in order to keep it afloat the government must impose politically unpopular economic reforms to keep money from an $11 billion International Monetary Fund loan flowing to Pakistan.
And Pakistanis are growing impatient with high food prices, poor services and infrastructure, and an education system that is so flawed that many parents are forced to send their children to Islamic seminaries that spread hard-line ideologies.
Anger and suspicion between Washington and Islamabad over the raid in Abbottabad, 50km from the Pakistani capital, showed no sign of abating.
Many in Washington suspect Pakistani authorities had been either grossly incompetent or playing a double game in the hunt for bin Laden and the two countries' supposed partnership against violent Islamists.
Al-Qaeda has acknowledged that bin Laden is dead, dispelling doubts by some Muslims the militant group's leader had really been killed by US forces, and vowed to mount more attacks on the West.
The announcement yesterday by the organisation appeared intended to show its followers around the globe the group had survived as a functioning network.
In a statement online, it said the blood of bin Laden, "is more precious to us and to every Muslim than to be wasted in vain”.
Al-Qaeda urged Pakistanis to rise up against their government to "cleanse" the country of what it called the shame brought on it by bin Laden's shooting and of the "filth of the Americans who spread corruption in it".
Reuters