CIA Releases 71 Pre-9/11 Presidential Briefs, Including 1998 Warning al-Qaeda “May Fly an Explosive-Packed Airplane Into a U.S. City”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Friday declassified 71 President’s Daily Brief products spanning Feb. 13, 1998, through Sept. 12, 2001, calling the release “the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever.” Sixty-nine of the items had never been made public. The collection runs more than 100 pages. Ratcliffe timed the dump to the 25th anniversary of the attacks and said it was consistent with President Trump’s transparency initiative. “In an act of exceptional transparency, we honor the memory of those we lost on that tragic Tuesday,” he said. “Twenty-five years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our Nation, but they did not break us.” PDBs are among the most restricted intelligence products in the government and normally stay classified for decades. Most pages remain redacted to protect sources.

A Sept. 10, 1998, item titled “Bin Ladin’s Location and Intentions,” prepared for President Bill Clinton’s White House three years almost to the day before the attacks, reported that Osama bin Laden’s preferred option was to strike the United States on its own soil in Washington and that the network behind that year’s East Africa embassy bombings “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a U.S. city.” The same brief said available intelligence “provides no conclusive information on Bin Ladin’s intentions for future attacks.” The 9/11 Commission’s 2004 report noted that U.S. intelligence believed al-Qaeda was considering using an airplane; it did not state that the warning had been placed in a presidential daily brief. The newly released file shows it was.

The February 1998 opener, “Terrorists seeking WMD capability,” listed bin Laden and other Islamic extremists among those seeking chemical, biological, and nuclear substances. A July 1998 brief said it was “plausible that Bin Ladin places a high priority on conducting attacks in the United States” and noted his interest in chemical and biological agents. An Aug. 28, 1998, item, after the embassy bombings and the U.S. cruise-missile response, said the network remained intact and that bin Laden was “considering attacks in the US.” A Dec. 4, 1998, PDB titled “Bin Ladin Preparing To Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks” — previously released in redacted form for the Commission — reported planning for attacks inside the United States, including an aircraft hijacking to free imprisoned extremists, that some members of the network had received hijack training, and that two operatives had evaded security checks during a trial run at an unidentified New York airport. Other 1998–99 briefs covered the Taliban’s refusal to hand bin Laden over, his North American infrastructure, and experiments to increase the output of explosives with radioactive material for a “dirty bomb.”

The Bush-era files continue the same thread. An October 2000 brief said bin Laden was “committed to striking U.S. targets” without specifying which ones or when. A July 24, 2001, item told the White House that an “expected imminent bin Laden-sponsored terrorist operation” had been postponed and that preparations for other attacks could still be underway. The well-known Aug. 6, 2001, PDB, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” is part of the historical record already; the new release does not add the four aircraft, the dates, or the World Trade Center and Pentagon as confirmed targets. A Sept. 12, 2001, situation report sent to the White House at 4 a.m. said a source indicated the plot had been planned for two years, that its existence was “widely known” in extremist circles, and that the U.S. Capitol had also been a target. The CIA said the products show analysts warning of bin Laden’s plotting “despite sparse, vague, and imperfect information.” The documents are posted on the agency’s website. The National Archives released a separate set of 9/11 Commission interview memoranda the same day.