CIA Releases Intelligence on Al Qaeda Before 9/11 Attacks

9:15 PM ETDeveloping

Politics Desk

In Short: The CIA has released over 100 pages of previously classified intelligence reports to the White House, warning Presidents Clinton and Bush of the growing threat from Al Qaeda, as 9/11 widows call for accountability.

Newly declassified documents show the CIA repeatedly warned Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that Osama bin Laden and his terror network were planning to hijack large commercial jets to attack the United States, as far back as three years before the 9/11 attacks, according to NBC News.

The intelligence reports, which amount to more than 100 pages, show a steady stream of alarming but imprecise intelligence reports that bin Laden was preparing to attack the United States, either on U.S. soil or at embassies and U.S. military bases abroad, according to NBC News.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the disclosure was 'the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever,' framing it as a new look at what the spy agency told two presidents about Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden before the deadly strikes, according to NBC News.

9/11 widow Terry Strada broke with the long-standing tradition of keeping politics out of Sept. 11 remembrances and called on President Donald Trump to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the attacks, according to NBC News.

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Others, including a successful businessman and a teenager who watched the attacks unfold on television at his school, felt compelled to enlist.
Looking back 25 years later, Byrnes draws a sharp distinction between the wars, including the decision to respond to the terrorist attacks and the choices that followed to continue the war on terror.
“Americans can now see for themselves the intelligence leading up to this tragic day for our Nation,” Ratcliffe said in a post on X.
Other intelligence memos stated that bin Laden’s militants were training to hijack commercial airliners, experimenting with crude chemical or other unconventional weapons, doing dry runs to test U.S. airport security, plotting to take hostages and trafficking narcotics to fund terrorism plans.
The intelligence reports to the White House also consistently found that bin Laden was in no danger of being expelled by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, even though some senior figures worried his plotting against the U.S. could put the Taliban in jeopardy.
The “Taliban is not likely to give up bin Ladin for less than full diplomatic recognition and significant reconstruction aid,” said one intelligence memo from March 26, 2001.
“Tell the Saudis to stop lying,” said Strada, who lost her husband, Tom, during the attacks and raised their three children on her own.
And Strada is part of a coalition of 9/11 families that believes the Saudis were complicit in the attacks and has sued the country’s government.

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