WASHINGTON — Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were warned repeatedly that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was scheming to attack the US using hijacked passenger jets — but still failed to stop the 9/11 attacks, according to a devastating cache of files released by the Trump administration Friday.
The formerly classified documents, some of which were previously described in press reports, buttress post-attack assessments that Washington did too little to counteract bin Laden’s Islamist terror band, leading to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
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 Dec. 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.”
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The document 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 Sept. 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.”
On Feb. 11, 2000, Clinton’s intelligence aides wrote that a manifesto had been seized identifying possible targets “such as the Statue of Liberty” in New York Harbor and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
In other files, analysts relayed assessments that bin Laden was mulling an attack on a shopping mall in Washington, DC.
The set of documents includes the infamous July 25, 2001, memo titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,” which dogged Bush throughout his presidency.
“Al-Qa’ida [sic] members-including some who are US citizens—have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks,” that file said.
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“After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington,” the document states, noting the FBI found “patterns 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.”
By August 2001, weeks before the 9/11 atrocity, Bush’s daily brief reported that the FBI was “conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Laden-related.”
In an interview with the bipartisan 9/11 Commission in April 2004, Bush claimed he received no “actionable intelligence” related to bin Laden prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but his administration was aware of Al Qaeda’s danger and was considering how to deal with the terror group.
The documents were released Friday as part of a broad transparency push by President Trump, who also has 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,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement.
In a head-turning moment hours before the disclosure, Condoleezza Rice, US national security adviser 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.”
Some of the files note that in addition to waging jihad against America, bin Laden was interested in freeing “blind sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was serving a life sentence in a North Carolina federal prison after being convicted of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Bush confirmed to the 9/11 Commission that he had seen the report that hijackers could take control of an airliner to secure the release of Abdel-Rahman or other convicted terrorists — but insisted his administration had not received any intelligence that passenger jets could be used as missiles.
In a September 2006 interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Clinton defended his handling of Al Qaeda, telling then-host Chris Wallace: “I got closer to killing [bin Laden] than anybody has gotten since. I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it.”
When Wallace pressed the topic, the former president sniped: “You did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me.”
Some of the information collected by US intelligence agencies suggested possible attacks that ultimately did not occur.
In a July 21, 1999, memo, the CIA noted that bin Laden said his group “made a dry run of a bombing of the FBI headquarters” in DC and suggested that the operation would occur “soon.”
The agency caveated that the intelligence may have been half-baked, as there were “reservations about the source.”
Officials were also worried bin Laden might have obtained a nuclear weapon — perhaps from Russia — before ultimately concluding he did not have one in his possession. Still they feared the Al Qaeda leader could use chemical or biological weapons to cause death and mayhem.
“If Bin Laden succeeded in buying a chemical or biological weapon,” a document noted in February 1999, “his past behavior and statements indicate he would have no reservations about using it and he would begin searching for a suitable target.”
Still another memo prepared for Clinton’s daily brief, dated Feb. 11, 2000, described bin Laden as pushing a “global drug trafficking” network to export heroin and opium to Europe and the US as part of “his anti-West campaign.”
By that time, bin Laden was firmly established in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, whose fundamentalist rulers raked in cash from the cultivation and processing of poppies into narcotics.
“Afghan territory under Taliban control is now the largest producer in the world of illicit opium, which is refined into heroin,” reads a December 2000 State Department fact sheet. “Narcotics-related income strengthens the Taliban’s capacity to provide support for international terrorism.”
Reps for Bush and Clinton did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. Both men were in attendance at Friday’s remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.
