Trump admin declassifies 9/11 documents on info presidents knew in lead-up to terrorist attacks

The Trump administration on Friday declassified pages of documents outlining what the Clinton and Bush administrations knew about Al Qaeda threats ahead of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack.The more than 100 pages are parts of the presidential daily brief, a top-secret daily summary of intelligence, analysis, and national security threats delivered to the president.They date from February 1998 to September 2001 during the end of President Bill Clinton’s term and the beginning of George W.

Bush’s presidency.The documents are heavily redacted but show US intelligence was aware that Osama bin Laden called for an attack in the United States as early as May 1998, during Clinton’s presidency.“We have received four reports from highly questionable sources suggesting Usama Bin Ladin is making plans to conduct an attack in the United States,” a document states in July 1998.Follow live updates as America honors the 25th anniversary of 9/11, in NYC and across the nationAnalysts believed bin Laden was mulling an attack on a shopping mall in Washington DC or plotting a kidnapping but the name of the target is redacted.The report also noted: “We have little information on Bin Ladin’s operatives in the US.”The first mention of an airline hijacking in America comes in December 1998: “Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release” of the man known as “the blind sheik” and some of his associates.Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian, was serving a life sentence in North Carolina tied to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.He ultimately died in an American prison in February 2017.The document notes Al Qaeda operatives had managed to evade security checks at an unnamed New York airport.

“The same source late last month said that Bin Ladin might implement plans to hijack a US aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and that two members of the operational te...