Gravitas | CIA warned of 'explosive airplane' threat three years before 9/11
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Gravitas | CIA warned of 'explosive airplane' threat three years before 9/11")
9/11, September 11 attacks, CIA, Bill Clinton, George Bush, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, 9/11 anniversary, declassified documents, aircraft hijacking, US intelligence, terror attack Photograph: (AFP)
Declassified CIA briefs reveal warnings to Bill Clinton about al-Qaeda attacks, aircraft hijacking and a possible attack on a US city years before 9/11.
25 years ago, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial jets and crashed them into New York's World Trade Centre and other key locations, killing nearly three thousand people.
But what if I told you that the U.S. president was warned of this scenario three years prior to the 9/11 terror attack?
As Americans paid their respects to the victims of this dastardly terror attack on its 25th anniversary, CIA released 71 declassified daily presidential briefs from 1998 to 2001 related to 9/11, in an act of transparency.
During this period, Bill Clinton and George Bush served as the presidents of America.
Now, these documents are believed to contain secretive intelligence analysis.
Back in March 1998, CIA highlighted in its brief that al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and other leaders had called for attacks against Americans and their allies anywhere in the world.
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Three months later, the intelligence agency noted that bin Laden was talking about bringing the war home to America.
This is not all.
In September 1998, the then president Bill Clinton was briefed of a possible attempt by al-Qaeda terrorists to fly an explosive-packed airplane into a U.S. city.
A few months later, CIA also warned him that al-Qaeda was preparing for aircraft hijacking, and a few operatives had even evaded security checks at an unidentified New York airport.
This has raised fresh questions on whether successive U.S. presidents could have done more to avert 9/11 in wake of so many intelligence inputs.
But this is not the first time the American government's failures regarding 9/11 have been flagged.
In 2004, an official report looking into the events leading to this terror attack observed that U.S. leaders did not understand the gravity of threat from bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
It also pinpointed the failure of the intelligence community to analyse the phenomenon of transnational terrorism due to reduced budgets and bureaucratic rivalries.
The report also criticised laxity in airport security which helped the hijackers.
Crucially, it stressed that protecting borders was not deemed to be a national security issue before 9/11.
While Osama bin Laden was eventually killed in an operation by U.S. Navy SEALs in Pakistan's Abbottabad in May 2011, ten years after 9/11, al-Qaeda and its offshoots remain a potent threat globally even as of today.