The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was aware at least two years before the 9/11 attacks that al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden hoped to commit a hijacking plane attack. Yet on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida did just that, both the government and military seemed utterly unprepared.
The Trump administration has repeatedly highlighted the corruption of the intelligence community, but that corruption goes back much further than the Biden administration. For a very long time, America’s intelligence agencies have been too focused on enforcing unconstitutional surveillance operations and not nearly enough focused on addressing very real threats like Islamic terrorism. That was apparently as true in 1998, as in 2022. And Bill Clinton was nearly as eager to whitewash Islamic terrorists as Joe Biden was.
It is especially ironic that the document’s date is September 10, almost exactly two years before the 9/11 attacks, although there was another document warning about the same possibility from December, which you can see below.
BREAKING: Newly declassified CIA documents show that U.S. intelligence agencies knew as early as 1998 that Bin Laden planned to hijack American aircraft. “Bin Ladin might implement plans to hijack a US aircraft,” a December 4, 1998 CIA memorandum stated. “[T]wo members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport.” “Some members of the Bin Ladin network have received hijack training,” the memo continued, “but no group directly tied to Bin Ladin’s al-Qa’ida has ever carried out an aircraft hijacking.” Four months after the CIA authored that memo, the 9/11 hijackers began to obtain the passports and visas they would later need to enter the U.S. Four of them attended flight schools in the U.S. At least one of them lived in an apartment with an FBI source.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 11, 2026
The September 1998 partially-redacted document begins by noting that bin Laden (spelled Bin Ladin in the document) was moving around Afghanistan, but then comes the part particularly interesting in retrospect. “Intelligence provides no conclusive information on Bin Ladin’s intentions for future attacks. Based on his past action, he and his allies may focus on places they have surveilled in the past, where their operatives can work relatively freely, and where security at US facilities is less stringent.” The CIA had an idea what that could involve, too, and it had to do with flying.
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“Bin Ladin late last month said his preferred option is to strike the US on its own soil in Washington,” the CIA document adds. The “same group responsible for the bombings in Africa may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”
So there you have it. The CIA was aware of the possibility that the terrorists would hijack a plane in an American city, and that Washington in particular would be a target. Ultimately, one of the 9/11 planes hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and another plane would have gone into the U.S. Capitol had not the heroic passengers crashed it in a field in Pennsylvania. Naturally, eyesight is always perfect in retrospect, but on the other hand, the fact that our military did not seem to have any response prepared for such an eventuality when it did occur is particularly puzzling.
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