CIA releases dozens of presidential daily briefs on bin Laden and al-Qaida before Sept. 11

Sev­er­al dozen pres­i­den­tial brief­ing doc­u­ments de­clas­si­fied Fri­day, the 25th an­niver­sary of the Sept. 11 at­tacks, de­tail in­tel­li­gence gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials had gath­ered about Osama bin Laden and al-Qai­da lead­ing up to the hi­jack­ings that killed near­ly 3,000 peo­ple and up­end­ed Amer­i­can na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The doc­u­ments il­lus­trate se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lysts’ track­ing of bin Laden’s move­ments and sup­port sys­tem, as well as con­cerns about pos­si­ble threats to U.S. tar­gets

Pro­claim­ing “an act of ex­cep­tion­al trans­paren­cy,” CIA Di­rec­tor John Rat­cliffe said the doc­u­ments were the agency’s sin­gle largest re­lease of de­clas­si­fied pres­i­den­tial dai­ly briefs — the high­ly clas­si­fied brief­ing pre­pared by the na­tion’s in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty for the gov­ern­ment’s most se­nior lead­ers.

The doc­u­ments range from a Feb­ru­ary 1998 file — pre­pared for then-Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton — en­ti­tled “Ter­ror­ists seek­ing WMD ca­pa­bil­i­ty” and men­tion­ing “bin Ladin and oth­er Is­lam­ic ex­trem­ists” to a Sept. 12, 2001, re­port in which a source in­di­cat­ed the at­tacks had been planned for two years and had al­so tar­get­ed the U.S. Capi­tol.

An­oth­er, from just weeks be­fore the at­tacks, de­tails how al-Qai­da’s “flex­i­ble op­er­a­tional de­ci­sion mak­ing and broad de­f­i­n­i­tion of ac­cept­able tar­gets en­able the group to ad­just plans to chang­ing con­di­tions.”

Asked for com­ment on the re­lease, the White House not­ed the re­lease of an­oth­er batch of doc­u­ments by the Na­tion­al Archives, al­so Fri­day. That batch, in­clud­ing in­ter­views with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials in the Clin­ton and Bush ad­min­is­tra­tions, was a prod­uct of the com­mis­sion that probed the at­tacks from 2002 to 2004. —(AP)

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Sto­ry by MEG KIN­NARD | As­so­ci­at­ed Press