Newly declassified intelligence documents show that both former President Bill Clinton and former President George W. Bush received repeated warnings that Usama bin Laden’s network was planning to hijack large commercial jets to attack the United States, according to files released Friday by the Trump administration.
The documents, drawn from presidential daily briefs (PDBs) and top-level CIA intelligence memos, reveal that al Qaeda operatives had already gotten past security checks during a trial run at an unidentified New York airport three years before hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
According to the files, the plotters intended to use hijacked aircraft as leverage to demand the release of imprisoned extremists, including Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and Ramzi Yousef.
A Dec. 4, 1998, presidential daily briefing warned: “Some members of the bin Ladin network have received hijack training, according to various sources, but no group directly tied to bin Ladin’s al-Qa’ida organization has ever carried out an aircraft hijacking. Bin Ladin could be weighing other types of operations against US aircraft.”
Earlier that year, a Sept. 10, 1998, PDB memo said bin Laden’s preferred target was Washington, D.C., and warned that the network behind the East Africa embassy bombings might attempt to fly an explosives-laden plane into an American city.
Throughout 1998, intelligence agencies tracked bin Laden’s movements and support network, identifying associates and sympathizers operating in several states, including New York, California, Texas, Michigan and Florida, the documents state.
The warnings did not stop with the Clinton administration. An Aug. 6, 2001, PDB given to Bush told him the FBI had found patterns of suspicious activity inside the U.S. consistent with preparations for hijackings or other attacks, along with recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
“Al-Qa’ida members — including some who are US citizens — have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks,” the Aug. 6, 2001, brief states. “After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington.”
Weeks before the attacks, another daily brief for Bush noted the FBI was conducting roughly 70 field investigations across the country that officials believed were tied to bin Laden.
The release is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to make public what U.S. intelligence agencies knew in the years and months leading up to the attacks.
“Today I authorized the release of 71 Presidential Daily Briefs to honor the lives of those killed on 9/11, along with CIA officers who subsequently gave their lives to the fight,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement posted on X.
Trump’s second administration has also released classified files related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
