The Clinton White House was warned that Osama bin Laden intended to crash a bomb-laden aircraft into an American city exactly three years before the September 11 hijackings, newly released CIA records show.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the alert appeared in a September 10, 1998 report prepared for senior Clinton administration officials authorized to receive the president’s most highly classified daily intelligence briefing.
The report, titled ‘Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions,’ did not identify a date or a specific target. But it indicated that the al-Qaeda leader was focused on Washington, DC. Three years later, terrorists working for bin Laden flew a hijacked plane into the Pentagon.
Additional documents show intelligence analysts told the White House in July 1998 that a bin Laden attack inside the United States was “plausible.” In October 2000, they warned that he was still “committed” to striking American targets, although officials said they “cannot pinpoint targets or timing.”
The disclosure emerged as Clinton attended the 25th-anniversary commemoration at Ground Zero, alongside families whose relatives were killed in the attack anticipated by the earlier memo.
In 2001, bin Laden appeared in at least 18 separate editions of President Bush’s daily intelligence briefing, including seven delivered in the weeks before the Twin Towers were destroyed.
A July 24, 2001 memo also reported that an “expected imminent” bin Laden operation had been delayed, while warning that other attacks could still be underway.
The CIA released the 71 documents to mark a quarter-century since nearly 3,000 people were murdered in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania.
New CIA files indicate that Bill Clinton’s White House was warned bin Laden wanted to fly a bomb-packed plane into an American city three years before the September 11 attacks.
The report, titled ‘Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions,’ named no date or target but suggested that Washington, DC, was in the terror leader’s sights.
In 2001 , bin Laden was featured in at least 18 separate editions of President Bush’s daily intelligence digest, seven of them landing on Bush’s desk weeks before the towers fell
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The revelation surfaced as Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden gathered at Ground Zero for the 25th anniversary, standing among the very families whose loved ones died in the attack the memo foreshadowed
The 9/11 Commission had mentioned the 1998 memo, but never disclosed it had been written for the president’s own briefing stream.
Former acting CIA chief Michael Morell told the Wall Street that the documents prove the agency delivered ‘long and loud strategic warnings’ that two administrations failed to act upon.
But agency insiders told the outlet that the intelligence at the time was often thin and drawn from ‘highly questionable sources.’
The lack of certainty, insiders told WSJ, made it difficult for policymakers to respond to a potential plot with no time, place or method.
However, one CIA analyst claimed that counterterrorism operations were not a presidential priority before 9/11, and the agency lacked the manpower to dismantle bin Laden’s terror network.
Bin Laden had played a key role in the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe hailed the dump as the largest release of the agency’s 9/11 analysis ever, calling it an act of transparency to honor the dead.
Just hours earlier at Ground Zero, 9/11 widow Terry Strada accused ‘administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today’ of protecting Saudi Arabia, and urged Trump to release the unredacted files on the kingdom’s alleged role.
Conservative Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who chairs the House task force pushing for the declassification of federal secrets, told followers on X she had been tipped that 9/11 files would be made public.