CIA releases trove of 9/11 classified documents on 25th anniversary, including warnings of plane attacks

The CIA released a large cache of classified government documents related to al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden on Friday (local time), the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said on X, formerly Twitter, that he had authorized the release of 71 presidential daily briefs "to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11 and the CIA officers who gave their lives in the subsequent war on terror."

The documents are top-secret materials prepared by US intelligence agencies for the president. Ratcliffe said it was the first time so many presidential daily briefs had been released at once.

The New York Times said the released materials did not appear to contain major new revelations, but confirmed what the 9/11 Commission noted in 2004 — that US intelligence agencies had repeatedly warned about al-Qaeda yet failed to grasp the full scope of the attacks being planned.

The declassified files span from a February 1998 brief to then-President Bill Clinton titled "Terrorists Seeking CWMD Capabilities" to a report dated Sept. 12, 2001 — the day after the attacks — stating that the operation had been in planning for two years and that the US Capitol had also been a target.

According to US media outlets including the Associated Press and The New York Times that analyzed the CIA materials, a July 1998 report stated that bin Laden considered carrying out attacks inside the United States his top priority and that he had shown interest in attacks using chemical and biological weapons.

A report from September of that year noted that bin Laden preferred to strike the US homeland from Washington, D.C., and included an assessment that al-Qaeda could send a bomb-laden aircraft into an American city.

The New York Times called it "a prescient warning, in retrospect, more than 25 years later."

A December 1998 report mentioned the possibility of aircraft hijackings, noting that some members of bin Laden's network had received hijacking training.

The AP said other documents detailed efforts to acquire materials for a dirty bomb — a conventional weapon laced with radioactive material — and that, according to intelligence officials, bin Laden's operatives had conducted explosive tests to increase energy output by around June 1999.

One report included intelligence that bin Laden had attempted to purchase highly enriched uranium to carry out a Hiroshima-style attack — a reference to the US nuclear bombing during World War II.

A 1999 report, two years before the attacks, showed that US intelligence had also detected bin Laden deliberately running a deception operation to suggest he had no intention of attacking the United States.

On Aug. 6, 2001, one month before the attacks, a brief titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" was delivered to the president.

At that time, intelligence officials reported suspicious activity consistent with aircraft hijackings or other types of attacks, including surveillance of federal buildings in New York. They also noted that the FBI was conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations across the country into cases believed to be linked to bin Laden.

Yet The New York Times noted that the intelligence briefs delivered to the US president before the Sept. 11 attacks showed "a pattern of various threat reports surfacing and then receding."

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser at the White House on the day of the attacks, spoke at a Sept. 11 commemoration ceremony at the Pentagon. "Those of us who were in charge that day did not see the nature of the threat in time to prevent it," she said. "We did what we could, but in the end it was not enough. I am grateful that there have been no subsequent attacks."

Rice also said, "I have always carried a deep personal sense of responsibility for the pain felt by the families of the victims and the trauma our country experienced."