JON SCOTT: So Osama Bin Laden may have taken some of his secrets to the grave, but he also left an awful lot behind on computer files, flash drives, handwritten letters, even phone numbers sewn into his clothing. Right now the CIA has a giant task force that's combing through all of that information. Ray Locker is Managing Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. So where do they start, Ray?
RAY LOCKER: Well, first of all, Jon, you get all of this information together, probably in central database and you have a team of analysts combing over every piece of it to see, you know, what they have, what kind of patterns they can find. You know, maybe they have 100 documents that mention the same names or a pattern of phone numbers or addresses. All of that, you know, goes together, and people start to look to see, you know, what things they can pluck out of that to find their next lead.
SCOTT: The mental effect on his followers is interesting, too, the material that the CIA or the administration released over the weekend showing Bin Laden looking very human, very humble, even feeble. That has an effect on the people who used to worship him as their leader, right?
LOCKER: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you have somebody who has an image as someone who's all-powerful, you know, outfoxing the united states at every turn, and then the next thing you know you see a video of him watching TV looking like he's wearing a Snuggy or something. That makes him look far more human than people are used to.
SCOTT: Yeah, and also the multiple takes he was doing on his, you know, statements to the world. It just makes him look a little bit clownish, really.
LOCKER: Absolutely.
SCOTT: All right. So what about, you know, the information that they are putting out that al-Qaeda is putting out. They're trying to suggest that they have not been defeated even though their leader is dead. What are you picking up from the a-Qaeda communication?
LOCKER: Well, it's a little bit edgy, it's a little bit defensive. I mean it's what you would imagine from any group in which their top person has been knocked off in such a conspicuous fashion. They want to make sure that their followers know that they are still a viable operation.
SCOTT: Are they?
LOCKER: Well, I think they are. As long as they have people like Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two, or Abu Yahya al-Libi, who is another leader who helped tunnel out of a prison in Afghanistan a few years ago. Any time you have people like that who are still out there and still dangerous, they are viable and they are a problem.
SCOTT: But those guys don't necessarily have the magnetic personality that Bin Laden had that enabled him to lead this group, right?
LOCKER: That's true, we don't. Maybe they do and we don't know about it. I mean Zawahiri is sort of a known factor, we know more about him, but there are others who maybe they were waiting their turn to rise to prominence and now that Bin Laden is gone, they'll step up and we'll see what they are capable of.
SCOTT: Ray Locker is the Managing Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Ray, thanks.
LOCKER: Thanks Jon.