Washington.- The CIA warned the White House for years about the threat posed by Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, to the United States, including possible airplane attacks, but it did not predict the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to documents declassified this Friday on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
The agency partially released 71 intelligence reports prepared for presidents between February 13, 1998, and September 12, 2001, during the administrations of Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush, a disclosure it described as the largest transparency exercise regarding 9/11.
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In one of the documents, dated September 10, 1998, three years before the attacks, an intelligence analyst wrote that the terrorist group “could crash a plane loaded with explosives into a United States city.”
Another document, dated December 4, 1998, contained information according to which “Bin Laden and his allies are preparing to attack the United States by hijacking airplanes”.
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The documents reinforce the conclusions of the national commission that investigated the attacks. In its 2004 report, it noted that intelligence agencies had repeatedly warned about the Al Qaeda threat, but failed to grasp the magnitude or the precise nature of the attack the group was preparing.
Following the attacks, the United States reorganized its national security architecture to integrate the work of the CIA, the FBI, and other agencies, which until then did not share information with each other.
The current CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, stated in a release that the declassification seeks to “honor the memory” of the victims of the attacks and of the Americans who subsequently died in the fight against terrorism.
