A newly declassified batch of CIA documents, released on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, shows that U.S. intelligence agencies were warned as early as December 1998 that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack an American aircraft, with a security breach reported at an unidentified New York airport.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida announced Friday morning that a release of 9/11 files was imminent. The tranche, totaling 101 pages, followed shortly after.
Among the documents is a CIA memorandum dated December 4, 1998, which states: “Bin Ladin might implement plans to hijack a US aircraft.” The memo goes on to say that “two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport.”
The same memo notes that “some members of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training,” but adds a caveat that, as of that time, “no group directly tied to Bin Ladin’s al-Qa’ida has ever carried out an aircraft hijacking.”
The timeline that followed is now well documented. Four months after the memo was written, the men who would carry out the September 11 attacks began obtaining the passports and visas needed to enter the United States. Four of the hijackers went on to attend flight schools inside the country, and at least one lived in an apartment alongside an individual who was an FBI source.
The newly released material is likely to renew long-standing questions about whether the warning signs available to U.S. intelligence agencies in the years before the attacks were adequately acted upon. Since 2001, lawmakers, families of victims, and independent researchers have repeatedly pressed for full disclosure of what the government knew and when, arguing that Americans have a right to a complete public record of the intelligence failures that preceded the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Analysis of the full 101-page release is ongoing.
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