Bill Clinton‘s White House was warned that Osama bin Laden wanted to crash a bomb-packed plane into an American city three years before the hijackers struck, explosive CIA files reveal.
The warning was a part of a September 10, 1998 report prepared for senior Clinton officials cleared to read the then-president’s most secret morning intelligence digest, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Headlined ‘Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions,’ it offered no date or target, but made clear the terror chief had Washington, DC, in his sights. Bin Laden’s terrorists would crash an airplane into the Pentagon three years later.
Other papers show analysts told the White House in July 1998 that a bin Laden strike on the US was ‘plausible,’ and in October 2000 that he remained ‘committed’ to hitting American targets, though spies ‘cannot pinpoint targets or timing.’
The revelation surfaced as Clinton was at Ground Zero for the 25th anniversary, standing among the very families whose loved ones died in the attack the memo foreshadowed.
In 2001, bin Laden was featured in at least 18 separate editions of Bush’s daily intelligence digest, seven of them landing on the former president’s desk weeks before the towers fell.
One July 24, 2001 memo even flagged that an ‘expected imminent’ bin Laden operation had been postponed, while cautioning that other attacks could still be in motion.
The 71 documents were released by the CIA to mark a quarter-century since nearly 3,000 people were murdered in New York City, the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.