CIA chief says it won't release Osama bin Laden's porn stash

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CIA chief says it won't release Osama bin Laden's porn stash

Mike Pompeo

REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Representative Mike Pompeo (C) listens as Former Senator Bob Dole (R) introduces him to testify before a Senate Intelligence hearing on his nomination to head the CIA on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 12, 2017.

When US Navy SEALs raided Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011, they found a huge cache of documents, which the US government has slowly made public.

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But there's some content that will never hit Bin Laden's Bookshelf - the stash of pornography the Al Qaeda leader apparently kept with him.

Fox News host Bret Baier sat down with CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Monday and asked when more documents from the compound will be released.

"The documents sat long stretches virtually untouched as different intel bureaucracies fought over control of access to them," Baier said. "The [Director of National Intelligence] has so far released fewer than 600 of them. You have worked to have those documents released. When will the American people see them?"

Pompeo responded that while the government will be releasing more documents "very soon," some will be kept in the vault.

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"Bret, we will release all but - there's some pornography, there's some copyrighted material - and everything other than those items will be released in the weeks ahead," Pompeo said.

Bin Laden's porn stash has long been the subject of fascination. Reuters first reported on the stash after the raid of his compound in 2011, during which he was killed.

Officials are not sure where in the compound the pornography was found or who was viewing it, but said the collection contained recorded video and is "fairly extensive."

The men's interest publication BroBible once filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the porn collection, but the CIA rejected it.