Osama bin Laden liked to read about the New World Order — a conspiracy theory that holds that a secretive, rich and powerful group wants to rule the world.

The al Qaeda leader had a lot of downtime during his decade in hiding following his masterminding of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. His reading list, as recovered by the raid on his Pakistani compound in 2011 and in part released by the U.S. government on Wednesday, offers some insight into his state of mind.

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants, a new report says.

Some of the controversial “sting” operations “were proposed or led by informants”, bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.

According to the new documentary, named TWA Flight 800 and premiering on Epix next month, six former members of the official crash investigation have stepped forward to refute the NTSB’s findings, saying the crash report was purposefully falsified, and to claim the investigation was “systematically undermined” by federal authorities.

THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.

Ten years after the attack, an in-depth examination of the case against Ivins by PBS’ “Frontline,” McClatchy Newspapers and ProPublica raises fresh doubts about the government’s evidence and questions whether - despite a $100 million investigation - the real anthrax killer remains on the loose.