Twenty-five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, newly released CIA material is putting renewed attention on the extraordinary stream of warnings that reached the highest levels of the U.S. government in the months before nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered.
The intelligence did not lay out the 9/11 plot, identify the four doomed flights or provide officials with a date and list of targets. But it makes clear that Washington knew Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the United States and that al-Qaeda was capable of patiently preparing sophisticated operations.
Perhaps no document captures the ominous atmosphere better than the Presidential Daily Brief delivered to President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001.
Its title was chillingly direct:
“Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.”
The briefing told Bush that intelligence indicated bin Laden had wanted to conduct terrorist attacks inside the United States since at least 1997. It also noted that al-Qaeda members had lived or traveled in the United States and that the organization apparently maintained a support structure that could assist attacks.
That briefing arrived just 36 days before September 11.
It was hardly the first warning about the growing al-Qaeda threat. According to the 9/11 Commission, the August 6 document was the 36th Presidential Daily Brief item that year related to bin Laden or al-Qaeda, although it was the first devoted specifically to the possibility of an attack inside the United States.
The warnings also reflected what intelligence officials understood about al-Qaeda’s methods: this was an organization capable of taking its time.
The August 6 briefing pointed to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania as evidence that bin Laden’s organization could prepare operations years in advance and continue despite setbacks.
That detail becomes particularly significant when compared with what investigators later learned about the development of the 9/11 plot.
According to the 9/11 Commission, mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed later claimed bin Laden repeatedly pressured him to launch the operation earlier than September. Bin Laden reportedly wanted the attack carried out in May 2001, but KSM resisted because the hijacking teams were not ready.
Bin Laden pushed again in June or July.
Again, the attack was delayed.
Other evidence examined by the commission supported parts of KSM’s account. Khalid al-Mihdhar reportedly told a relative that the attack had initially been scheduled for May, postponed to July and ultimately moved to September.
By the summer of 2001, the threat reporting had become increasingly intense.
The 9/11 Commission described it as a “drumbeat” of intelligence. Officials received reports carrying warnings such as “Bin Ladin network’s plans advancing,” while another report indicated supporters were planning an attack in the United States using explosives.
Yet the crucial pieces never came together in time.
The commission ultimately concluded that although intelligence established that bin Laden wanted to strike America, much of the specific threat reporting pointed overseas. Precautions were consequently concentrated abroad, while domestic agencies were not effectively mobilized.
That distinction matters.
These documents do not establish that Bush or other senior officials knew that 19 hijackers were preparing to seize commercial airliners on September 11 and crash them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
They reveal something more complicated and, in its own way, deeply unsettling.
The United States knew its enemy wanted to bring terrorism onto American soil. Officials knew al-Qaeda planned meticulously, could spend years preparing operations and was generating an escalating stream of threat intelligence during the summer of 2001.
What they did not know was precisely where, when or how the blow would fall.
Then came a clear Tuesday morning in September.
At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and the warnings that had accumulated throughout that summer suddenly acquired a terrible clarity.
Twenty-five years later, the declassified record remains a sobering reminder of one of the central lessons of September 11: having pieces of intelligence and understanding what those pieces mean before disaster strikes are two very different things.