Newly declassified CIA documents show that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush received repeated intelligence warnings in the years before September 11, 2001, that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were seeking to attack the United States, with one 1998 briefing raising the possibility that terrorists could fly an explosives-filled aircraft into an American city. The newly released material confirms and expands upon intelligence failures previously examined by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.
The documents, released by the CIA on Friday as the nation marked the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, include intelligence reports dating to 1998. Some of their contents had previously become public, but the release represents the largest collection of declassified Presidential Daily Brief material related to 9/11 ever made public by the agency.
Among the warnings were reports indicating that Al Qaeda operatives were already inside the United States and that individuals associated with bin Laden’s network may have conducted a practice run at a New York airport almost three years before terrorists hijacked four passenger jets on September 11, killing nearly 3,000 people.
“Bin Laden [sic] Preparing To Hijack US Aircraft,” a Dec. 4, 1998, document prepared for Clinton’s Presidential Daily Brief ominously warned.
“Some members of the Bin Laden network have received hijack training, according to various sources,” the document said. “Bin Laden could be weighing other types of operations against US aircraft.”
The same intelligence report cited information that “Bin Laden might implement plans to hijack a US aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and that two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport.”
An even earlier briefing delivered during the Clinton administration contained a striking reference to the possibility of an aircraft being used in an attack against an American city. The September 10, 1998, material said: “Bin Laden late last month said his preferred option is to strike the US on its own soil in Washington … the same group responsible for the [US Embassy] bombings in Africa [Kenya and Tanzania] may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”
A July 1998 intelligence document reflected the uncertainty surrounding some of the information reaching U.S. officials at the time, saying “[w]e have received four reports from highly questionable sources suggesting Usama [sic] Bin Laden is making plans to conduct an attack in the United States.”
By February 11, 2000, Clinton’s intelligence briefers were reporting that authorities had obtained a manifesto listing possible terrorist targets “such as the Statue of Liberty” in New York Harbor and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Other intelligence assessments raised concerns that bin Laden could be considering an attack on a shopping mall in Washington, D.C.
The newly released collection also includes the well-known 2001 Presidential Daily Brief concerning bin Laden and the threat of an attack inside the United States. The briefing, received by Bush in August 2001, was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” The 9/11 Commission later examined the document and the administration’s response to it in detail.
“Al-Qa’ida [sic] members-including some who are US citizens—have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks,” that file said.
The briefing also reviewed bin Laden’s longstanding determination to retaliate against the United States and cited FBI findings concerning suspicious activity on American soil.
“After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington,” the document states, noting the FBI found “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”
By August 2001, only weeks before the attacks, intelligence presented to Bush indicated that the FBI was “conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Laden-related.”
When Bush was interviewed by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission in April 2004, he said he had not been provided with “actionable intelligence” that could have enabled his administration to prevent the attacks. According to the commission, Bush said he understood Al Qaeda to be dangerous but had not been told that a terrorist cell inside the United States had been identified.
The newly declassified records were released as part of a broader transparency initiative under President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has also released previously classified government records concerning the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
“Today I authorized the release of 71 Presidential Daily Briefs to honor the lives of those killed on 9/11,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement.
The CIA said the 71 declassified products total more than 100 pages and document how intelligence analysts’ understanding of bin Laden and Al Qaeda evolved before September 11 amid what the agency described as information that was often incomplete, vague and difficult to assess.
Hours before the documents became public, Condoleezza Rice, who was serving as Bush’s national security adviser when the September 11 attacks occurred, apologized to victims’ families for the government’s failure to recognize and prevent the danger in time.
“Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11,” Rice said.
“I will always carry deep personal remorse for the pain that you, the families of the fallen, still feel, and for the trauma that our country endured.”
The declassified material also shows that intelligence officials believed bin Laden was interested not only in attacking the United States but in securing the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “blind sheikh,” who was serving a life sentence in federal prison in North Carolina after being convicted in connection with a plot to attack New York landmarks following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Bush later confirmed to the 9/11 Commission that he had seen intelligence concerning the possibility that terrorists could hijack an airliner in an attempt to force the release of Abdel-Rahman or other imprisoned extremists. He maintained, however, that his administration had not received intelligence specifically warning that passenger aircraft would be turned into missiles.
Clinton, meanwhile, strongly defended his administration’s record against Al Qaeda during a September 2006 appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I got closer to killing [bin Laden] than anybody has gotten since. I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it.”
When then-host Chris Wallace continued questioning Clinton about his administration’s handling of the terrorist leader, Clinton responded: “You did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me.”
The newly released intelligence also underscores that not every pre-9/11 warning proved accurate. U.S. agencies collected numerous reports describing possible terrorist operations that never materialized, highlighting the difficulty officials faced in distinguishing credible threats from unreliable intelligence.
One example came in a July 21, 1999, CIA memorandum reporting that bin Laden had said his organization “made a dry run of a bombing of the FBI headquarters” in Washington and suggesting an attack would happen “soon.”
But CIA analysts explicitly warned about the reliability of that information, noting that they had “reservations about the source.”
Intelligence officials also investigated whether bin Laden might have acquired a nuclear weapon, potentially from Russia. They ultimately concluded that he did not possess one, but remained deeply concerned about Al Qaeda’s efforts to obtain chemical or biological weapons. The newly released CIA collection includes several reports examining bin Laden’s interest in weapons of mass destruction.
“If Bin Laden succeeded in buying a chemical or biological weapon,” a document noted in February 1999, “his past behavior and statements indicate he would have no reservations about using it and he would begin searching for a suitable target.”
Another intelligence report prepared for Clinton’s daily briefing on February 11, 2000, described bin Laden as promoting a “global drug trafficking” operation aimed at sending heroin and opium into Europe and the United States as part of “his anti-West campaign.”
At the time, bin Laden was based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where the cultivation of poppies and production of narcotics generated enormous revenues.
“Afghan territory under Taliban control is now the largest producer in the world of illicit opium, which is refined into heroin,” a December 2000 State Department fact sheet stated. “Narcotics-related income strengthens the Taliban’s capacity to provide support for international terrorism.”
Representatives for Clinton and Bush did not immediately respond to requests for comment following the release of the documents. Both attended the 25th-anniversary remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan on Friday.
