The CIA marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks by declassifying its largest-ever release of intelligence documents tied to the tragedy, offering Americans an unprecedented look at what the government knew about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the years before the hijackings.
The agency released 71 President’s Daily Briefs on Friday, covering the period from February 1998 through September 12, 2001. The documents represent the highly classified daily intelligence digests prepared for the nation’s most senior leaders, including then-Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the release “an act of exceptional transparency” and described it as “the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever.” In a post on X, Ratcliffe said, “Americans can now see for themselves the intelligence leading up to this tragic day for our Nation.”
Among the most striking documents is a September 10, 1998 report titled “Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions,” which warned that al-Qaeda “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a U.S. city.” The report did not specify the eventual targets, timing, or methods of what would become the September 11 plot nearly three years later, but it demonstrates that American intelligence officials were tracking the general threat of an aircraft-based attack years in advance.
The newly released trove also includes an April 1998 document describing the Taliban’s reluctance to hand over bin Laden, at the time considered their “guest” in Afghanistan, noting the regime’s “gratitude for his assistance during the Soviet occupation” made officials “reluctant to alienate him by monitoring or controlling his activities.” Other documents describe bin Laden’s history of planning operations “years in advance” and note he was “not deterred by setbacks,” even after previous attacks on American embassies. By August 2001, intelligence officials were flagging “suspicious activity” consistent with attack preparations inside the United States. The collection closes with a September 12, 2001 situation report — filed the day after the attacks — in which a source indicated the plot had been in the works for two years and had also targeted the U.S. Capitol.
In total, the release spans more than 100 pages of previously unseen analysis. The documents were posted directly to the CIA’s website for public review.
The 9/11 Commission’s landmark 2004 report concluded that the attacks succeeded in part due to a “failure of imagination” within the U.S. national security apparatus, compounded by poor communication and information-sharing failures between agencies like the FBI and CIA. Intelligence historians note the newly declassified documents do not fundamentally alter that conclusion, but they do provide the public with granular, contemporaneous detail about just how consistently intelligence officials were warning of a looming threat from bin Laden’s network, even without foreseeing the specific method or scale of what would ultimately unfold.
The release comes as the nation marked the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, which killed nearly 3,000 people when hijackers flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with a fourth plane crashing in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back against their captors.
