Chilling CIA Docs Show The Warnings About A Terror Plot That Preceded 9/11

The U.S. received more detailed warnings about Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks than previously known — warnings that began under the Clinton administration roughly three years before the tragedy — according to 101 pages of intelligence memos declassified by the CIA on Friday.

The CIA declassified 71 intelligence memos about bin Laden, the Taliban and Afghanistan’s opium trade spanning the presidential administrations of both Clinton and former President George W. Bush.

You can read them here.

Presidential Daily Briefs (PDB) are delivered to the Commander in Chief and a handful of other senior officials and summarize the half dozen or so most pressing intelligence matters of the day.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe called it “the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever” in a statement.

“In an act of exceptional transparency, we honor the memory of those we lost on that tragic Tuesday by releasing 71 declassified products,” Ratcliffe said.

They date back to before the October 1998 arrest of four men linked to bin Laden involved in bombing the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Specific threats about a plane hijacking began appearing as early as December 1998 under Clinton via a PDB titled “Bin Ladin Preparing To Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.”

“Reporting suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking,” it reads. “Two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport. … Some members of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training.”