CIA releases dozens of presidential daily briefs on bin Laden and
al-Qaida before Sept. 11
[September 12, 2026]
By MEG KINNARD
Several dozen presidential briefing documents declassified Friday, the
25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, detail intelligence government
officials had gathered about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida leading up to
the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people and upended American
national security.
The documents illustrate security analysts' tracking of bin Laden's
movements and support system, as well as concerns about possible threats
to U.S. targets. They also detail officials' understanding of his
network in the United States and other countries, including how his
operations were financed.
Proclaiming it “an act of exceptional transparency,” CIA Director John
Ratcliffe said the documents were the agency's single largest release of
declassified presidential daily briefs — the highly classified briefings
prepared by the nation’s intelligence community for the government’s
most senior leaders.
The documents range from a February 1998 file — prepared for
then-President Bill Clinton — titled “Terrorists seeking WMD capability”
and mentioning bin Laden and other Islamic extremists to a Sept. 12,
2001, report in which a source indicated the attacks had been planned
for two years and had also targeted the U.S. Capitol.
An April 1998 document described the Taliban's unwillingness to hand
over bin Laden, at the time seen as their “guest” in Afghanistan, noting
their “gratitude for his assistance during the Soviet occupation” was
making them “reluctant to alienate him by monitoring or controlling his
activities.”
Briefers in July 1998 called it “plausible that Bin Ladin places a high
priority on conducting attacks in the United States" and noted his
"interest in conducting attacks with chemical and biological agents.”
Two months later, a briefer wrote that bin Laden's “preferred option is
to strike the US on its own soil in Washington,” and that al-Qaida “may
fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”
Potential hijackings were also discussed in December 1998, when a
briefer described how conspirators “had evaded security checks during a
recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport," and “some members
of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training.”
Other documents detail bin Laden's pursuit of materials for making
“dirty bombs,” conventional weapons infused with radioactive material.
By June 1999, according to intelligence officials, his operatives had
conducted such experiments with explosives to "increase their energy
output.”
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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air
Force Gen. Dan Caine, and other officials, watch as the flag is
unfurled at the Pentagon, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026 in Arlington, Va.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
About two years before the attacks, intelligence officials were
aware bin Laden appeared to be misleading the Taliban about his
reluctance to launch an unprovoked attack on the U.S. Briefs
prepared for President George W. Bush in early 2001 focused in part
on bin Laden's “experimentation by crude means to make and deploy
biological agents.”
A report a month before the attacks indicated bin Laden's commitment
“to conduct terrorist attacks in the US," noting that 1998 al-Qaida
attacks on U.S. embassies “demonstrate that he prepares operations
years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.”
At that time — August 2001 — officials wrote of “suspicious activity
in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other
types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings
in New York,” adding that the FBI was “conducting approximately 70
full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin
Ladin-related.”
Many of the documents were redacted to conceal sources’ names and
other identifying information. They didn’t appear to break any new
ground on the planning of the attacks or on U.S. officials’
understanding of how they had unfolded.
In the years immediately following the attacks, a bipartisan
commission highlighted a lack of information sharing among agencies
such as the CIA and FBI, and issued recommendations that yielded new
positions, including a centralized director of national
intelligence, as well as the National Counterterrorism Center, which
analyzes domestic and foreign terrorism information across different
government branches.
Asked for comment on the release, the White House noted the release
of another batch of documents by the National Archives, also Friday.
That batch, including interviews with national security officials in
the Clinton and Bush administrations, was a product of the
commission that probed the attacks from 2002 to 2004.
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