WASHINGTON, September 11 — The CIA released 71 intelligence reports on Friday covering the months and years before the September 11, 2001 attacks, the largest single disclosure of agency analysis related to 9/11, timed to the ceremonies marking 25 years since the strikes. The trove comprises 70 documents written before the attacks and one from the day after. Two of them had already been made public during the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, the body Congress established to examine the attacks.
Nearly all of the documents released Friday carry redactions.
What the analysts told two presidents
The material includes assessments prepared for the President’s Daily Brief, the digest distributed to the president and senior administration officials. Those assessments went to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the disclosure “the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever.” In a statement, Ratcliffe said: “25 years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our Nation, but they did not break us. Generations of CIA officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring al-Qa’ida would never again harm our country.” The earliest document is dated February 13, 1998.
It states that bin Laden and other Islamic extremists “met [redacted] and agreed to procure unspecified chemical, biological, and nuclear substances from open markets.” The same report notes that bin Laden “has legitimate companies, business relationships, and a financial empire that could assist his pursuit of” those weapons. At the time, bin Laden and his fighters were based in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban.
Narcotics, fatwas and the Taliban’s calculus
Several documents describe the Taliban’s motivations for harboring bin Laden and trace his growing role in Afghanistan’s drug trade.
An October 1999 report said he had “made a substantial investment in 57 narcotics laboratories associated with” Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, and had recruited experts “to develop more addictive drugs — possibly ecstasy or methamphetamine.” The 9/11 Commission later found “no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking.” Another report from February 1998 records that bin Laden and others had issued a fatwa.
Taken together, the documents show how much the agency knew, years ahead of the attacks, about bin Laden and his followers’ determination to strike the United States. What to watch next is whether the remaining redactions are lifted, and whether the release prompts further declassification from the other agencies that held pre-attack reporting.
