The CIA has released 71 intelligence reports detailing what it told Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks.
The disclosure, described by CIA Director John Ratcliffe as the agency’s “single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever”, includes 70 documents issued before the attacks and a further report dated September 12 2001.
Most of the material was prepared for the President’s Daily Brief, circulated to the president and senior administration officials. Nearly all the documents contain redactions, while two had already been made public during the work of the 9/11 Commission.
What the CIA documents reveal about bin Laden
The earliest report, dated February 13 1998, said bin Laden and other Islamic extremists had agreed to obtain unspecified chemical, biological and nuclear substances from open markets.
It also said bin Laden had legitimate companies, business relationships and a financial empire that could assist efforts to acquire such weapons.
Several assessments focused on Afghanistan, where bin Laden and his fighters were protected by the Taliban. One report from October 1999 claimed he had invested heavily in 57 narcotics laboratories linked to Mullah Omar, then the Taliban’s leader, and had recruited experts to develop more addictive drugs.
However, the 9/11 Commission later said it had found “no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking”.
A separate February 1998 assessment reported that bin Laden and others had issued a fatwa calling for Muslims to attack American interests and civilians worldwide until the United States withdrew from Saudi Arabia and Palestine.
In a warning dated September 10 that year, intelligence analysts said extremists “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city”. The document also said there was no conclusive information about bin Laden’s intentions, while noting that he had identified Washington as his preferred target inside the United States.
The 9/11 Commission later found that the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center did not analyse how a hijacked or explosives-laden aircraft might be used as a weapon after the warning was issued.
Warnings in the months before September 11
Reports from the summer of 2001 described uncertain intelligence about a possible attack in the United States. A July 24 memo said an expected imminent operation sponsored by bin Laden had apparently been postponed, but warned that preparations for other attacks could still be under way.
The release also includes the August 6 2001 President’s Daily Brief, titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US”. It said FBI information showed suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The 9/11 Commission said the August briefing was the 36th item that year relating to bin Laden or al Qaeda, but the first to focus on the possibility of an attack inside the United States.
Friday’s disclosure contains 18 documents from the Bush administration before the attacks. A former senior intelligence official said other warnings dating back to 1996, as well as additional material from 2001, were not included.
The commission concluded that the intelligence community recognised during the summer of 2001 that the number and seriousness of threat reports were unprecedented. It identified “failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management” as contributing to the government’s inability to prevent the attacks, describing the failure of imagination as the most important.
The final document released by the CIA is a situation report dated September 12 2001. It said mounting evidence suggested Sunni extremists in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf had known that attacks directed by bin Laden were imminent.
The report claimed bin Laden and Mullah Omar had clashed in August over his determination to carry out terrorist attacks. It said bin Laden had told the Taliban leader that operations were under way which would cause great damage to the United States.
The memo also recorded an account that the attacks had been planned for two years and might represent “the beginning of the wrath”, while suggesting that the Capitol and the White House could have been among the targets.
Ratcliffe said generations of CIA officers had since dedicated their careers to securing justice for those killed and ensuring that al Qaeda could not harm the United States again.
