Osama bin Laden didn't have an internet connection or a phone, but for years he was a prolific user of email by saving messages to a thumb drive and having them sent from a distant internet cafe.Bin Laden would type the messages on a computer that had no connection to the outside world and then instruct a trusted courier to drive to a cafe so they could be emailed.
The courier would then save messages addressed to bin Laden to the same drive and bring it back so his boss could read them offline.
The process was so tedious that even veteran intelligence officials have marveled at the al-Qaida chief's ability to maintain it for so long.
US Navy Seals seized roughly 100 flash memory drives when they killed bin Laden at his Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound.
The cache of messages is so big that the government has enlisted Arabic speakers from around the intelligence community to pore over them.
