US working on material recovered from Bin Laden hideout

The Obama administration hopes to get a treasure trove of information from the materials, including a computer hard drive and discs, recovered from the hideout of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a US military operation in Pakistan.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that there are three areas that they hope the information that was collected will provide insight into.

"First of all, and most importantly, in any case, is any evidence of planned attacks. Second would be information that could lead to other high-value targets or other networks that exist that maybe we don’t know about or that we only know a little bit about," Carney said.

"Third and more broadly, on the al Qaeda network itself and then the sustaining network for bin Laden in Pakistan -- what allowed him to live in that compound for as long as he did," he said.

The CIA has established a task force to study the material recovered from the mansion in Abbottabad in Pakistan where the al Qaeda leader was hiding and was killed.

"Quite a bit of materials that were found at the sight and collected: Those materials are currently being exploited and analysed. A task force is being set up at CIA to conduct that task, given the volume of materials collected at the raid site," a senior intelligence official said.

The Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan has said US special forces people who were on the compound took advantage of their time there to make sure that they were able to acquire whatever material they thought was appropriate and what was needed.

"We are in the process right now of looking at whatever might have been picked up. But I'm not going to go into details about what might have been acquired," he said.

"We feel as though this is a very important time to continue to prosecute this effort against al-Qaida, take advantage of the success of yesterday and to continue to work to break the back of al-Qaida," Brennan said.

"We are trying to determine exactly the worth of whatever information we might have been able to pick up. And it's not necessarily quantity; frequently it's quality," he said in response to a question.

According to a senior intelligence official, it is a robust collection of materials that they need to sift through.

"We hope to find valuable intelligence that will lead us to other players in al-Qaida," he said.