CIA releases over 100 pages of declassified presidential briefings on bin Laden and pre-9/11 intelligence

Donald Trump’s administration has released more than 100 pages of declassified briefings provided to U.S. presidents in the years before September 11, 2001, marking what the CIA is calling its largest-ever disclosure of intelligence about Osama bin Laden and events leading up to the attacks over the last 25 years.

Friday’s release of 71 presidential briefs includes a document from 1998 during Bill Clinton’s administration discussing a potential operation led by Bin Laden to hijack a commercial airliner, and that two accomplices may have successfully evaded security checks in a trial run.

The heavily redacted documents also discuss “potential U.S. targets” and reports from "questionable sources" that Bin Laden was preparing for an attack on U.S. soil.

Other documents appear to trace how CIA analysts came to understand al-Qaeda’s operations and intentions under bin Laden, stressing his desire to bring “war to America,” despite what analysts characterized as limited or incomplete intelligence, as they delivered warnings to White House officials about the terror network.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said he declassified the documents “in an act of exceptional transparency” to “honor the memory of those we lost on that tragic Tuesday.”

“Generations of CIA officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring al-Qa'ida would never again harm our country,” he said in a statement. “In the years that followed, numerous CIA officers made the ultimate sacrifice in the Global War on Terror. We honor their memory and service through our commitment to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat those who wish to cause us harm.”

The documents — with heavy redactions to protect the names of informants — do not appear to produce any major new revelations about the attacks but paint a fuller picture of what intelligence officials were sharing with Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush in the years leading up to 9/11, with memos from February 1998 through September 12, 2001 showing incomplete strands of intelligence presented by analysts in their typically detached style.

Those findings largely reinforce what was previously reported by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States and its 2004 report that examined threats from al-Qaeda.

A memo written on September 10, 1998, reported that Bin Laden’s “preferred option is to strike the U.S. on its own soil in Washington” and “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a U.S. city.”

Another document from August 6, 2001, to Bush notes that Bin Laden is “determined to strike” the U.S., potentially relying on al-Qaeda members living in the country. The FBI discovered activity “consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”

A document from August 28, 2001, days before the attacks, determined that Bin Laden’s operations are “expert and flexible” though vulnerable to “short-term delay and disruption.”

The document also notes that al-Qaeda stresses “careful planning, tight security practices and flexibility” throughout its operations — “sound operational practices” that allow it to pose a threat to the U.S. “even in a heightened security environment.”

But analysts also appeared to struggle with pulling together a cohesive narrative based on their limited intelligence on al-Qaeda’s operations.

A memo from August 3, 1999, suggested that al-Qaeda may have been leading “a deliberate effort to mislead us” by pitching so many different targets identified by analysts.

“The diverse targets mentioned in the reporting, combined with a high incidence of Bin Ladin-related walk-ins, suggest a deliberate effort to mislead us,” analysts wrote. Roughly a year later, on October 14, 2000, analysts said Bin Laden’s network was capable of “mounting multiple operations with no warning.”

The release of the documents comes as Americans across the country honor the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks, which have profoundly reshaped the U.S. and triggered a series of world-shaping events.

Bin Laden’s network of al-Qaeda terrorists struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the first of four attacks on September 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people and set in motion a series of profoundly world-changing events. Al-Qaeda hijackers took over three other flights, targeting the World Trade Center’s South Tower, the Pentagon and another location in Washington, D.C. Passengers on that flight, United Airlines Flight 93, fought back against the hijackers and the plane was steered into a field in rural Pennsylvania.