Was Osama bin Laden Bullish on Gold?

So says the CIA via NYT:

At the end of 2010, Al Qaeda found itself suddenly flush after securing a $5 million ransom, and the group had to decide what to do with its windfall....

In a letter he wrote in December 2010, Bin Laden instructed Al Qaeda’s general manager to set aside a third of the ransom — nearly $1.7 million — to buy gold bars and coins. The letter was part of the trove of intelligence seized by Navy SEALs in the raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011 that was declassified last month by the Central Intelligence Agency...

“The overall price trend is upward,” Bin Laden wrote to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the Qaeda general manager. “Even with occasional drops, in the next few years the price of gold will reach $3,000 an ounce.”

Was this Osama's real belief or a bizarre  deep state way of discrediting gold?

NYT manages to link Osama's alleged gold perspective to Ron Paul:

Bin Laden turns out to have been as bullish about the precious metal as any Ron Paul devotee, Tea Party patriot or Wall Street financier.

  -RW