Trump admin declassifies 9/11 files on what presidents knew before the attacks

WASHINGTON, DC: Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush were warned dozens of times about al-Qaeda plotting to attack the US using hijacked passenger jets, according to a newly declassified cache of documents that was released by the Trump administration on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The formerly classified files confirm post-attack assessments that Washington didn't adequately counter the militant group in the years leading up to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.

A pattern of warnings across two administrations

The documents claimed al-Qaeda members were present in the US and had even performed a “trial run” at a New York airport nearly three full years before the staggering assault that took down the Twin Towers.

“Bin Laden [sic] Preparing To Hijack US Aircraft,” a December 4, 1998, document prepared for Clinton’s Presidential Daily Brief ominously warned.

“Some members of the Bin Laden network have received hijack training, according to various sources,” the document said. “Bin Laden could be weighing other types of operations against US aircraft.”

It added that a source had revealed that “Bin Laden might implement plans to hijack a US aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and that two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport.”

On September 10, 1998, material for the daily brief presented to Clinton warned: “Bin Laden late last month said his preferred option is to strike the US on its own soil in Washington … the same group responsible for the [US Embassy] bombings in Africa [Kenya and Tanzania] may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”

That July, a document said, “[W]e have received four reports from highly questionable sources suggesting Usama [sic] Bin Laden is making plans to conduct an attack in the United States.”

Potential targets list obtained

More than a year before the attacks, in February 2000, the FBI recovered a manifesto, which included the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower as potential targets.

Another document, discovered in time, was the infamous memo of August 6, 2001, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”

This memo indicated that al-Qaeda operatives “have resided in or traveled to the US for years” and that there was a support network that could provide assistance.

It is notable that Bush’s daily brief from August 2001 indicated that the FBI was conducting approximately 70 field investigations across the country that seemed to be related to bin Laden.

Condoleezza Rice apologizes as Trump continues broader declassification push

The documents were released Friday as part of a broad transparency push by President Donald Trump, who has also released long-secret files on the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, his brother Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

“Today I authorized the release of 71 Presidential Daily Briefs to honor the lives of those killed on 9/11, along with CIA officers who subsequently gave their lives to the fight,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe wrote on X (Formerly Twitter). He characterized it as "the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever" in another statement.  

In a head-turning moment hours before the disclosure, Condoleezza Rice, US national security advisor during 9/11, apologized to families of the victims for the government’s counterterrorism failures.

“Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11,” Rice said. “I will always carry deep personal remorse for the pain that you, the families of the fallen, still feel, and for the trauma that our country endured.”

Bush told the bipartisan 9/11 commission in 2004 that he didn't get any "actionable intelligence" giving specifics of the attacks before they happened, but he knew al-Qaeda posed a threat.

Clinton defended himself during a 2006 interview with Fox News when asked about his record on the hunt for bin Laden.

"I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since... I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it," he said.

Both Bush and Clinton attended the remembrance ceremony held Friday at Ground Zero.