The CIA has released 71 President’s Daily Brief documents related to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, providing a new look at intelligence presented to senior U.S. officials in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe ordered the documents declassified to coincide with the 25th anniversary of 9/11, calling the release the agency’s largest-ever disclosure of presidential intelligence products connected to the attacks.
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The documents span from February 1998 through Sept. 12, 2001, and total more than 100 pages, although substantial portions remain redacted.
Sixty-nine of the 71 documents had not previously been released publicly in their current form, according to reporting on the collection.
Ratcliffe described the disclosure as an “act of exceptional transparency” and said it was consistent with President Donald Trump’s broader declassification efforts.
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The records offer additional detail about what American intelligence agencies knew about bin Laden’s intentions before the attacks, including repeated warnings that al-Qaeda wanted to strike U.S. targets.
One newly released document dated Sept. 10, 1998, reported intelligence that bin Laden was considering an attack involving an aircraft loaded with explosives being flown into an American city.
The report did not identify the eventual 9/11 plot, its hijackers, its targets or when such an attack might occur. The intelligence was fragmentary and lacked enough detail for authorities to disrupt a specific operation.
— CIA Director John Ratcliffe (@CIADirector) July 17, 2026
Another July 1998 brief cited reports from sources the CIA itself considered questionable that bin Laden was preparing attacks against the United States, while an October 2000 document said he remained committed to striking American targets but that officials could not determine the location or timing.
By the summer of 2001, the warnings had intensified.
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A July 24 briefing discussed the postponement of what intelligence officials believed had been an imminent terrorist operation while warning that preparations for other attacks might still be underway.
The records also add context to the previously declassified Aug. 6, 2001, briefing titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.”
That document told President George W. Bush that bin Laden had wanted to attack inside the United States for years and referenced possible hijackings, suspicious surveillance of federal buildings and ongoing FBI investigations.
The bipartisan 9/11 Commission later found that more than 40 President’s Daily Brief items dealing with bin Laden were produced between Bush’s inauguration and Sept. 10, 2001.
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The newly released material does not establish that either the Clinton or Bush administration had advance knowledge of the specific Sept. 11 plot.
Instead, it reinforces the historical record showing that intelligence officials recognized al-Qaeda as a growing threat but lacked the detailed information necessary to identify the hijackers, targets and timing of the attacks.
The 9/11 Commission ultimately concluded that failures before the attacks involved intelligence collection, information sharing, government organization and what it described as a broader “failure of imagination.”
One document from Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the attacks, reported information from a source indicating that the operation had been planned for roughly two years and that the U.S. Capitol had also been considered a target.
Al-Qaeda ultimately hijacked four passenger planes on Sept. 11. Two struck the World Trade Center towers in New York, one hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
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Nearly 3,000 people were killed. The CIA release coincided with another significant declassification effort by the National Archives.
The Archives released additional 9/11 Commission materials, including previously redacted portions of interview summaries involving former national security advisers Condoleezza Rice and Sandy Berger, former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke and former CIA Director George Tenet.
Those records provide further information about how officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations assessed the al-Qaeda threat and debated potential responses before the attacks.
Taken together, the newly available documents do not fundamentally overturn what previous investigations concluded about 9/11.
They instead provide a more detailed view of the warnings moving through the intelligence system before the attacks — showing that officials repeatedly recognized bin Laden’s desire to attack Americans, including inside the United States, while still failing to uncover the specific operation that would ultimately become Sept. 11.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
