CIA declassifies 9/11 files: What US knew about Osama bin Laden before attacks

The CIA has declassified 71 highly classified intelligence documents that reveal the extent of warnings received by US officials about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida in the years leading up to the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Released on Friday, the 25th anniversary of the attacks, the documents include presidential daily briefs prepared for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. They detail intelligence on bin Laden’s movements, his support network, efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and concerns that al-Qaida was preparing attacks inside the United States.

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“I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” 25 years ago, President George W. Bush gave his famous “I can hear you” speech at Ground Zero, just three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. With one… pic.twitter.com/PVTBfUl5RM — Fox News (@FoxNews) September 11, 2026

CIA Director John Ratcliffe described the release as an “act of exceptional transparency” and said it was the agency’s largest-ever release of declassified President’s Daily Brief products related to 9/11. The CIA said the material includes more than 100 pages of analysis that are being made public for the first time.

Warnings about attacks on US soil

One of the earliest documents, from February 1998 and prepared for Clinton, was titled “Terrorists seeking WMD capability” and referred to bin Laden and other extremist groups.

An April 1998 briefing also described the Taliban’s reluctance to hand over bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan under its protection. The document said the Taliban’s gratitude for his role during the Soviet occupation made it reluctant to restrict his activities.

By July 1998, intelligence briefers considered it plausible that bin Laden placed a high priority on attacks inside the US and noted his interest in chemical and biological weapons.

A September 1998 briefing went further, saying bin Laden’s preferred option was to attack the US on its own soil in Washington and warning that al-Qaida might use an explosive-laden aircraft against an American city, according to the Associated Press, which reviewed the documents.

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Declassified · 25 years on

The warnings before 9/11

The CIA has released 71 President’s Daily Brief products covering February 1998 to September 12, 2001 — what two US presidents were told about Osama bin Laden, and how much of it stopped short of the thing that happened.

71

PDB products released

70

Dated before the attacks

101

Pages of analysis

3 yrs

First aircraft warning to 9/11

The warnings Aug 6, 2001 What’s new What it doesn’t show

What the briefs said, and when

July 3, 1998

Attacks inside the United States

“Reports That Bin Ladin is Planning Attacks Inside the US”

Analysts told the president it was plausible that bin Laden placed a high priority on striking inside the United States, and noted his interest in chemical and biological agents.

As written

The judgement was framed as plausible, not established — and the chemical and biological interest was already on the record here, three years before the 2001 briefs returned to it.

September 10, 1998

An explosive-packed plane, and Washington

“Bin Ladin’s Location and Intentions”

Three years to the day before the attacks, one memo carried two findings: that bin Laden’s preferred option was to strike the US on its own soil in Washington, and that the network behind the East Africa embassy bombings might fly an explosive-packed aircraft into a US city.

As written

The same memo stated that intelligence gave no conclusive information on bin Laden’s intentions for future attacks. Both findings sit in this one document — they are not two separate warnings.

December 4, 1998

Hijack training, and a trial run

“Bin Ladin Preparing To Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks”

The brief reported that some members of the network had received hijack training, and that suspected conspirators had got past security checks during a recent trial run at an unnamed New York airport. A follow-up a week later described planning to hijack aircraft before Ramadan.

1999 · several briefs

Unconventional weapons

February, May and June 1999, on unconventional weapons capability

Successive briefs described efforts to obtain material for a radiological “dirty bomb” — a conventional charge laced with radioactive matter. Separately, by June 1999 analysts assessed that operatives had run tests to raise the energy output of ordinary explosives.

Two strands, not one

The explosives tests concerned conventional charges. They were not dirty-bomb trials, and the two run through different documents.

February 2001

Biological and radiological interest

“Afghanistan: Bin Ladin’s Interest in Biological and Radiological Weapons”

Briefs prepared for the incoming Bush administration returned to unconventional weapons, including what was described as crude experimentation to make and deploy biological agents.

August 6, 2001

Determined to strike in the US

“Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” — see the next tab

The best-known document of the set, and the one piece of it that was already public. It reported patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other kinds of attack.

September 11, 2001

The attacks

Four hijacked aircraft were flown at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and, after passengers fought back, into a field in Pennsylvania.

2,977 killed

The official toll for September 11, 2001, excluding the 19 hijackers: 2,606 at the World Trade Center and surrounding area, 125 at the Pentagon, and 246 passengers and crew aboard the four aircraft.

Counted separately: more than 9,000 people have since died of illnesses linked to exposure at or near the World Trade Center site, according to the World Trade Center Health Program. That figure is not part of the 2,977 and should not be added to it.

The brief everyone already knew

Intent

Bin Laden had wanted to conduct attacks inside the United States since 1997, and had implied his followers would bring the fighting to America

Presence

Al-Qaeda members had lived in or travelled to the country for years, with a support structure that could aid attacks

Activity

FBI reporting showed patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attack, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York

And the number

The FBI was said to be running roughly 70 bin Laden-related full field investigations across the United States

Contested figure

The 70-investigations number is what the brief told the president. Members of the 9/11 Commission later said publicly that they could not substantiate it; one commissioner said nobody at the FBI could account for such a tasking of field offices. Read it as a claim inside the document, not a verified count.

Not new. This brief was declassified and released by the White House in April 2004, after the commission and victims’ families pressed for it. What Friday’s release adds is the trail of reporting that led up to it.

What was actually released

71 PDB products

Described by the CIA as its single largest release of declassified presidential briefing analysis related to 9/11

70 before, one after

Seventy are dated before the attacks. The collection closes with a situation report of September 12, 2001 — the day after

Two presidents

The briefs span the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, from February 13, 1998 onward

Heavily redacted

Nearly all carry redactions covering sources’ names and other identifying detail

February 13, 1998 → September 12, 2001

Three and a half years of analysis, 101 pages, published on the 25th anniversary

What the documents do not show

No plot

No date, target, method or named operative for the September 11 operation appears anywhere in the released material.

Scattered aircraft references

The mentions of aircraft run across three years and several different theories of attack. The 9/11 Commission had already found that pre-attack intelligence referred to aircraft without specifying time, place, method or target.

Redactions

Because sources and identifying detail are blacked out, what was withheld from the public record cannot be assessed from these pages alone.

Not a decision record

These are analysts’ products. They show what was put in front of two presidents, not what was discussed, tasked or acted on afterwards.

A chronology of warnings is not, by itself, evidence of foreknowledge. The value of this release is in showing how an understanding was assembled from sparse and often uncorroborated reporting — and how far short of the event it stopped.

Casualty figures are given separately by event and source, and are not combined. Document dates and titles follow the CIA’s own published index.

Sources: CIA, 71 declassified President’s Daily Brief products, released September 11, 2026; Associated Press; CBS News; NBC News; Al Jazeera; BBC; text of the August 6, 2001 PDB released April 2004; 9/11 Commission record; World Trade Center Health Program. Compiled September 12, 2026.

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The warnings continued. In December 1998, a briefing referred to an al-Qaida network that had received hijacking training and described conspirators evading security checks during a trial run at an unidentified New York airport.

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Intelligence tracked bin Laden’s WMD ambitions

The documents also show that US intelligence was monitoring al-Qaida’s attempts to acquire unconventional weapons.

Briefings described bin Laden’s efforts to obtain material for so-called “dirty bombs”, conventional explosives combined with radioactive material. By June 1999, intelligence officials said his operatives had conducted experiments intended to increase the energy output of explosives.

Briefings prepared for Bush in early 2001 also focused on bin Laden’s attempts to develop and deploy biological agents using crude methods.

The intelligence community was simultaneously concerned that bin Laden was misleading the Taliban about his intentions. The documents indicate that officials believed he was not necessarily being truthful when he suggested he did not intend to launch an unprovoked attack against the US.

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A warning just weeks before 9/11

By August 2001, the intelligence picture had become more urgent.

A briefing prepared about a month before the attacks said bin Laden remained committed to carrying out terrorist attacks in the US. It also pointed to the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of US embassies as evidence that the organisation could prepare operations over several years and was not easily deterred by setbacks.

The moment President George W. Bush learned 9/11 had happened in a classroom pic.twitter.com/1TfFSO602S — Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) November 8, 2023

The same period saw reports of suspicious activity inside the US that intelligence officials considered consistent with preparations for hijackings or other attacks.

The briefing referred to surveillance of federal buildings in New York and said the FBI was conducting about 70 full-field investigations across the US that it considered related to bin Laden, according to the Associated Press.

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The CIA’s release does not, however, establish that US officials knew the precise timing, targets or method of the September 11 attacks. The documents remain partly redacted, including material that could identify intelligence sources. AP reported that the newly released records do not appear to fundamentally alter what is already known about the planning of the attacks or how US agencies responded.

On September 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger planes hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. (File Photo)

What happened after 9/11?

The release also sheds light on the intelligence failures that became a major focus after the attacks.

A bipartisan commission that investigated 9/11 highlighted serious problems in information-sharing between agencies, including the CIA and FBI. Its recommendations eventually led to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center.

The National Archives also released another set of records on Friday, including interviews with senior national security officials from the Clinton and Bush administrations. Those records were produced as part of the 9/11 Commission’s investigation, which ran from 2002 to 2004.

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US tells UN: ‘We hunted down bin Laden’

The document release came as the UN Security Council marked 25 years since the attacks.

The 15-member council adopted a presidential statement reaffirming its condemnation of the September 11 attacks and stressing that terrorism, its financing and the planning and preparation of terrorist acts remain contrary to the UN Charter. It was the council’s first presidential statement on counter-terrorism in five years.

US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told the council that the US and its allies had pursued al-Qaida and other militant groups in the years since the attacks.

“Together, we hunted down bin Laden,” Waltz said, referring also to US-led campaigns against the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

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Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011, nearly a decade after the September 11 attacks.

Pakistan’s UN envoy Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, meanwhile, highlighted his country’s losses in the fight against terrorism, saying more than 4,700 Pakistanis had been killed by terrorism emanating from Afghanistan over the preceding three years. He cited attacks attributed by Pakistan to groups including the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Balochistan Liberation Army.

The UN’s counter-terrorism body said the threat has evolved significantly since 2001, becoming more fragmented and diffuse even as countries have strengthened their counter-terrorism cooperation.

(With inputs from AP and PTI)