On Friday — 25 years after the Sept. 11 attacks — the CIA released a trove of presidential daily briefings leading up to that day, providing a stark chronological timeline of flashing warning signs missed by multiple administrations.
The CIA said the collection is the agency’s single largest release of declassified President’s Daily Brief products related to 9/11, “providing unprecedented transparency on America’s most sensitive intelligence publication from the years before and the day after one of the darkest moments in our history.”
“The products trace the story of CIA analysts’ evolving understanding of al-Qa’ida and efforts to highlight and warn of Usama Bin Ladin’s attack plotting despite sparse, vague, and imperfect information,” the CIA said in its release.
While much of the information had been revealed in the last 25 years, including through the 9/11 Commission Report, most of the documents themselves have not been seen by the American public. The documents reveal the consistent drumbeat of intelligence presented to then-Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Most striking is a PDB from Dec. 4, 1998, detailing a suspected hijacking plot. Previously reported on by The Washington Post in 2004, the memo — starkly titled “Bin Ladin Preparing To Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks” — wrote in plain language, “Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking.”
The memo indicates sources said that “two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport” and noted “some members of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training,” raising questions as to why airport security was not increased in the subsequent years leading up to 9/11.
A U.S. official told MS NOW that CIA analysts at the time struggled to obtain information about al-Qaida and fully analyze it.
“It was a small team, a few dozen people,” the official said. “Counterterrorism was not a priority.”
The official said leading up to 9/11, Bin Laden was not a top focus in terms of intelligence collection.
“[Bin Laden] was not a priority collection target,” the official said, adding that information on the terrorist leader was “extremely sparse.”
But throughout the 71 documents starting on Feb. 13, 1998, CIA intelligence paints a clear picture of a Bin Laden determined to attack the United States — while being unable to pinpoint specifics.
The briefs repeatedly detail Bin Laden’s efforts to “procure unspecified chemical, biological, and nuclear substances” and his dependence on Taliban’s “goodwill” to provide safe harbor for him and his associates to conduct terrorist plots in Afghanistan.
As of June 1998, the U.S. had no information indicating Bin Laden had a terrorist cell in the U.S., with a September 1998 memo describing Bin Laden’s nongovernmental organization-funded network in the U.S. as “loosely connected.”
A July 3, 1998, memo detailing four reports from “highly questionable sources” suggests Bin Laden planned to conduct an attack in the U.S., including one in Washington “probably at a shopping mall.”
“We have little information on Bin Ladin’s operatives in the US,” it said.
Still, in September 1998 the U.S. maintained that the “most serious threat” of terrorism came from Bin Laden and affiliated groups despite his U.S. associates seeming “less structured than cells in other countries,” with Europe viewed more at risk.
“Intelligence provides no conclusive information on Bin Ladin’s intentions for future attacks,” a Sept. 10, 1998, memo says.
“Bin Ladin late last month said his preferred option is to strike the US on its own soil in Washington,” the memo warns. “The same group responsible for the bombings in Africa may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”
A Dec. 11, 1998, memo built on the PDB a week earlier warns of an aircraft hijacking (see above) — “over the past two months suggest Bin Ladin’s group is preparing one or more terrorist attacks in the near future” … “several reports of impending anti-US terrorist operations” … “planning to hijack aircraft before Ramadan.”
By May 25, 1999, the daily brief reports that Bin Laden “is pursuing a variety of options for developing chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear capabilities” and includes a stark warning: “Scientists are developing a “nuclear weapon” at a facility in Heart, and Bin Ladin believes it could be ready in one to two months.”
Through the fall and winter of 1999 — two years before the 9/11 attack — intelligence memos consistently reported Bin Laden’s determination to target and attack the U.S., with an Aug. 3, 1999, memo noting, “The ongoing activity of Bin Ladin operatives reflects the resilience of his organization in the face of setbacks … his personnel still are planning attacks in widely scattered locations such as Washington.”
“The extent of Bin Ladin’s reach and the variety of targets make anticipating attacks difficult,” the report says. A manifesto seized in March 2000 recommended attacking “population targets, such as skyscrapers, airports, or nuclear power plants.”
The documents reveal an intelligence community struggling to “pinpoint targets of timing” for a possible Bin Laden-ordered attack, but still, the memos do not indicate an urgency to track down the al-Qaida leader nor meaningfully increase pressure on the Taliban to surrender him.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Clinton vigorously defended his administration’s counterterrorism record, saying his team broke up al-Qaida cells, prevented several terrorist incidents and tried numerous times to get Bin Laden. Clinton told the 9/11 commission that if the U.S. had actionable intelligence about where Bin Laden was, he would have mobilized special operations forces to take action.
“Usama Bin Ladin’s al-Qua’ida and sympathetic groups are determined to carry out spectacular terrorist attacks against the US before yearend,” a December 2000 briefing warns.
But the alarms persisted long after Clinton left office.
Several memos prepared for Bush throughout early 2001 caution against the threat of Bin Laden’s “extensive program to develop or acquire chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and materials,” as well as his desire to drive U.S. forces from the gulf and willingness to “try unconventional attacks to advance this goal.” One memo says Bin Laden designing or testing a nuclear device was the “least probable scenario,” with another noting, “Bin Ladin and his associates have experimented by crude means to make and deploy biological agents.”
Over the course of the spring and summer of 2001, threats became more specific — and prescient.
A May 22, 2001, memo says “planning is under way for three separate operations in [REDACTED] to take US diplomats or civilians hostage,” warning conspirators seeking release of U.S.-held prisoners “may hijack an aircraft or storm a US Embassy.”
“For the second time in two weeks [REDACTED] indicates that an expected imminent Bin Ladin-sponsored terrorist operation has been postponed, but preparations for other near-term attacks may still be in train,” a July 24, 2001 report says, adding, “Something they had expected to hear in the news is still planned but has been delayed a few months.”
A month before 9/11, the intelligence community warned of al-Qaida’s ability to attack within U.S. borders
“Al-Qa’ida 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,” an Aug. 6, 2001, memo says, noting that while the U.S. had not been able to corroborate “some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft,” FBI information since then still “indicates 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.”
Bush told the 9/11 commission that that memo — the 36th item that year related to Bin Laden or al-Qaida and the first specifically devoted to the possibility of an attack within the U.S. — was “historical in nature,” but did not recall discussing it with the attorney general or whether his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, had done so.
“[Bush] said that if his advisers had told him there was a cell in the United States, they would have moved to take care of it,” the 9/11 Commission Report says. “That never happened. “
Speaking at a memorial ceremony at the Pentagon 25 years later, Rice gave a “deeply personal” apology to the families of the nearly three thousand people who lost their lives.
“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,” she said. “We did what we knew to do, but by definition, it was not enough.”
She called it a “miracle” that there was not a follow-up attack, expressing gratitude for the armed forces and intelligence community.
“Their service and their sacrifice in the war on terror kept us safe,” Rice said. “But 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.”
Nora McKee, Peggy Helman and Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
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