Several dozen presidential briefing documents detailing warnings about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda before the September 11 attacks have been declassified to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks in the United States.
The papers set out intelligence gathered on bin Laden’s movements, al-Qaeda’s support network and possible threats to US targets before the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people and transformed American national security.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe described the release as “an act of exceptional transparency”, saying it was the agency’s largest single publication of declassified presidential daily briefs.
The highly classified documents were prepared by the intelligence community for the country’s most senior leaders. One briefing, produced for then-president Bill Clinton in February 1998, was titled “Terrorists seeking WMD capability” and referred to investigations into “bin Laden and other Islamic extremists”.
A report issued on September 12, 2001, included a source’s account that the attacks had been planned for two years. The source also indicated that the US Capitol in Washington DC had been among the intended targets.
Another briefing, prepared only weeks before the attacks, warned that al-Qaeda’s “flexible operational decision making and broad definition of acceptable targets enable the group to adjust plans to changing conditions”.
Taken together, the documents illustrate how security analysts were tracking bin Laden and his organisation while assessing the potential threat to American interests before the attacks.
