Memo: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US"

DECLASSIFIED

President Bush was warned a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the FBI had information that terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and might be targeting a building in Lower Manhattan.

The short article, titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," also included information that the FBI had "70 full field investigations" underway in the United States that were believed related to Osama bin Laden, and that a caller to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 said a group of bin Laden supporters was in the United States planning attacks with explosives.

The document, citing a foreign intelligence service whose identity was redacted, said bin Laden told followers he wanted to "retaliate in Washington" for the United States' 1998 missile attack on his facilities in Afghanistan.

While the two-page document included information dating to 1997, it also contained information that the government suspected al Qaeda was actively preparing for an attack in the United States. While it gave no information about specific targets or dates, the briefing warned that U.S. intelligence believed bin Laden had serious plans to hit the United States.

The CIA author of the document wanted to make clear to the president that, despite the many threats being centered abroad, agency analysts believed there was a real and continuing danger that bin Laden was determined to attack the United States.

As one former administration official who has read the PDB said last week: "The agency doesn't write a headline like that if it doesn't want to get attention." In this case, the former official said, "the CIA did not believe Bush policymakers were taking the threat to the U.S. seriously."

The PDB judged that the millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been a bin Laden attempt, noting that convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam said that he was encouraged by bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaida in his plan to attack Los Angeles International Airport and that bin Laden was aware of the operation. Zubaida was planning his own attack, Ressam told the FBI.