The Weekly Standard reports that documents recovered from the raid on Osama Bin Laden in 2011 showed Al Qaeda leadership had been in direct contact with Boko Haram, the Nigerian group that the State Department under Clinton refused to label a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2011 and 2012, despite requests from the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice and Members of Congress:
From The Weekly Standard report:
While State Department officials were trying to ignore Boko Haram’s al Qaeda ties in 2011 and 2012, other parts of the Obama administration were sitting on files showing that al Qaeda’s senior leaders had been in direct contact with the group.
Hundreds of thousands of documents and files were recovered during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in early May 2011. The Obama administration has released only 17 of them, plus a handful of videos, to the public. According to U.S. intelligence officials, some of the files that remain in the administration’s possession catalog al Qaeda’s dealings with the ultraviolent Nigerian group.
On April 27, 2012, the Washington Post reported that bin Laden’s files “show that through his couriers, bin Laden was in touch not only with al Qaeda’s established affiliates but also with upstarts being groomed for new alliances. Among them was Nigeria’s Boko Haram, a group that has since embraced al Qaeda and adopted its penchant for suicide attacks.”
Two days later, on April 29, 2012, the Guardian ran its own account explaining the contents of the files. “Bin Laden appears to have been in direct or indirect communication with [the] Nigerian-based militant group Boko Haram as well as many other militant outfits,” the Guardian reported. “As with the Taliban, the question of whether Boko Haram … is in touch with al Qaeda or one of its affiliates has been hotly debated by analysts.” Nonetheless, “documents in the cache show that leaders of the Nigerian group had been in contact with top levels of al Qaeda in the past 18 months.” The Guardian added that the description of bin Laden’s files it was given by intelligence officials confirmed claims made by a senior Boko Haram figure earlier that same year.