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As Americans paused to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Friday, newly declassified documents offered a striking look at warnings U.S. intelligence officials were receiving years before hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
One intelligence brief from September 1998 said Osama bin Laden's “preferred option is to strike the US on its own soil in Washington” and raised the possibility that al-Qaeda “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”
The warning was among 71 President's Daily Brief products declassified and released by the CIA on Friday, offering a new window into intelligence about bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the years before September 11.
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CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the disclosure an “act of exceptional transparency” and said the documents represented the agency's single largest release of declassified presidential daily briefs.
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Longstanding Concerns About Planes as Weapons
The documents show concerns about attacks inside the United States and the possible use of aircraft emerging years before September 11.
In July 1998, intelligence officials wrote that it was “plausible that Bin Ladin places a high priority on conducting attacks in the United States” and noted his “interest in conducting attacks with chemical and biological agents.”
By December, another brief discussed potential hijackings. It said conspirators “had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport” and that “some members of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training.”
Other documents detail bin Laden's pursuit of materials for making “dirty bombs,” conventional weapons infused with radioactive material. By June 1999, intelligence officials said his operatives had conducted experiments with explosives to “increase their energy output.”
Briefs prepared for President George W. Bush in early 2001 also focused in part on bin Laden's “experimentation by crude means to make and deploy biological agents.”
Warnings continued as September 11 approached.
A report a month before the attacks said bin Laden remained committed “to conduct terrorist attacks in the US” and noted that previous al-Qaeda attacks demonstrated “that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.”
The August 2001 report also cited “suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks,” including surveillance of federal buildings in New York. It said the FBI was conducting approximately 70 investigations in the United States that it considered related to bin Laden.
The newly released documents do not show that U.S. officials knew of the specific September 11 plot before it occurred. Many of the documents were redacted to conceal sources' names and other identifying information.
Read the Full Collection of 9-11 Documents Here
71-PDB-9-11-Related-Collection.pdf.PDF
The Associated Press reported that the files did not appear to break new ground on the planning of the attacks or U.S. officials' understanding of how they had unfolded.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on September 11, 2001, when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial aircraft, striking the World Trade Center and Pentagon. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back.
The collection also includes a September 12, 2001, report in which a source indicated the attacks had been planned for two years and had also targeted the U.S. Capitol, according to AP.
What US Leaders Said About 9/11 This Week
Former President George W. Bush, who was in office at the time of the attacks, reflected this week on the moment he learned the United States was under attack.
Speaking during an event at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas on Wednesday, Bush recalled sitting in a Florida classroom listening to a child read when then-White House chief of staff Andy Card told him that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center and that America was under attack.
“I didn't have much time to process that, but it was pretty clear to me that if we were under attack, that my job was to defend the child that was reading to me and her family and her country,” Bush said. “And so it was a moment of clarity.”
Condoleezza Rice, who served as Bush's national security adviser at the time of the attacks, spoke at the Pentagon's anniversary ceremony on Friday and reflected on the failure to prevent September 11.
“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. “We did what we knew to do. But by definition, it was not enough.”
“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,” she added.
President Donald Trump observed the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks at a ceremony at the Pentagon on Friday, where he and first lady Melania Trump joined in remembering the victims.
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Trump and the first lady listened as the names of the 184 people killed at the Pentagon that day were read aloud, with a bell tolling between each. Trump also recounted the stories of several victims in his remarks.
“Today, we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago,” Trump said.
“We will never, ever forget. That's why we fight today. We don't have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win. We will always remember the victims and the families of September 11, 2001.”
Former President Joe Biden also remembered the 2,977 people killed in the attacks and the thousands who later died from related illnesses. He said he and former first lady Jill Biden were holding the victims’ families close and honoring the first responders, the passengers who fought back aboard Flight 93 and those who went on to serve the country after the attacks.
“Even now, we remember the greatest lesson of one of our nation's darkest days: at our most vulnerable, unity is our most powerful strength,” Biden wrote on X.
Former President Barack Obama reflected on how difficult it may be for Americans who were young in 2001—or not yet born—to understand the shock and uncertainty of September 11.
Obama said he and former first lady Michelle Obama were remembering those killed in the attacks and those who died in the wars that followed, while urging Americans to remember what he called the “true lesson of 9/11.”
“We can survive even our darkest days as long as we move forward as one nation and one people,” Obama wrote on X.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Gray R. Thomas
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