The bin Laden files, declassified
On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the CIA released dozens of newly declassified presidential daily briefings tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the years before the hijackings, which CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the agency's largest-ever release of such briefs. The documents span a 1998 Clinton-era memo flagging bin Laden's WMD ambitions through a September 12, 2001 report describing a two-year-old plot that had also targeted the US Capitol; among them, an April 1998 file notes the Taliban's reluctance to hand over their guest, and a mid-1998 briefing warns bin Laden's preferred target was Washington, potentially via an explosive-laden aircraft. Other entries describe hijack training among his network and a foiled trial run evading security at an unnamed New York airport, plus pursuit of radioactive material for dirty bombs. Officials say the heavily redacted files do not reveal new facts about how the attacks were actually planned or carried out.
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