The Central Intelligence Agency declassified more than 100 pages of presidential daily briefing papers Friday, marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The documents detail intelligence assessments about al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden provided to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in the years and months preceding the attacks.
Among the declassified materials is a presidential intelligence brief dated September 10, 1998, delivered to the Clinton White House. At the bottom of that document, a CIA analyst included a warning that a group associated with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden "may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city." According to agency officials, this warning appears particularly prescient in retrospect.
The September 11, 2001 attacks ultimately claimed nearly 3,000 lives. Four commercial aircraft were hijacked that day. Two planes struck the World Trade Center in New York City, one hit the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a fourth, intended for the U.S. Capitol, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers and crew members fought back against the terrorists aboard the aircraft.
The declassified briefing papers span from 1998 through 2001, providing what officials described as a comprehensive record of the intelligence community's assessments of the al-Qaeda threat during that period. The release offers the American public, for the first time, detailed access to the information available to the two presidents regarding bin Laden and his organization in the years leading up to the attacks.