The CIA has declassified 71 intelligence reports spanning 1998 to the day after 9/11, revealing that both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush received repeated warnings about Osama bin Laden’s plans in the years leading up to the attacks.
The 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks just passed, marking a quarter century since 2,977 people lost their lives when four hijacked commercial planes were used in a coordinated attack on US soil.
Two jets hit the Twin Towers, a third struck the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought to retake control of the aircraft. Osama bin Laden was identified as the mastermind behind the attacks.
Now, the CIA is offering the clearest look yet at exactly what US intelligence knew about him, and when.
The largest 9/11-related release in the agency’s history
CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the release “the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever.”
Speaking on the anniversary, he said, “25 years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our Nation, but they did not break us. Generations of CIA officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring al-Qa’ida would never again harm our country.”
The 71 documents include intelligence assessments prepared for the President’s Daily Brief, one of the most highly restricted documents given to a sitting president.
Seventy of the reports predate the attacks, with one final document dated the day after. Only two of these documents had previously been made public; the rest are being seen for the first time.
A years-long trail of warnings
The documents span from February 1998 to September 2001, covering both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
The earliest, dated February 13, 1998, claimed bin Laden had met with an unnamed contact and agreed to procure unspecified chemical, biological, and nuclear materials through open markets.
It also noted that he had legitimate companies, business relationships, and financial resources that could support that pursuit.
Other reports from the same period pointed to bin Laden’s growing involvement in Afghanistan’s drug trade alongside Taliban leader Mullah Omar. A separate February 1998 memo documented a call from bin Laden and others urging Muslims worldwide to attack US interests and civilians until the US withdrew from Saudi Arabia and “Palestine.”
The warning that came closest to predicting what happened
A memo from September 1998 specifically warned that bin Laden’s network “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city,” though it also noted there was no conclusive intelligence confirming his exact intentions at the time.
By the summer of 2001, reports referenced a previously postponed plan to strike the US. Then came the now well-known “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” memo from August 2001, first declassified back in 2004.
It described patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings, including surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The 9/11 Commission later found that “most of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented,” adding that many officials “knew something terrible was planned, and they were desperate to stop it.”
The last report in the collection is dated September 12, 2001, one day after the attacks.
It stated that evidence suggested Sunni extremists across Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf had been aware an attack directed by bin Laden was imminent, and that the existence of a likely operation had been widely known among extremist circles in Afghanistan beforehand.
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