9/11 at 25: Declassified Files Expose Intelligence Warnings Ignored, While Civilian Courage and Global Solidarity Emerge from Tragedy
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
Newly declassified CIA files reveal that Bill Clinton's White House was warned as early as September 1998 that Osama bin Laden intended to crash a bomb-laden aircraft into an American city, with Washington DC identified as a likely target three years before the September 11 attacks. The disclosure, released to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks, has reignited debate over whether successive US administrations failed to act on repeated intelligence warnings, even as former officials note the underlying intelligence was often vague and drawn from questionable sources.
The 71 documents include a September 1998 briefing titled "Bin Laden's Location and Intentions" prepared for Clinton's top-secret daily digest, alongside further warnings in July 1998 and October 2000, and at least 18 mentions of bin Laden in George W. Bush's briefings during 2001, including a July memo noting a postponed "imminent" operation. Former acting CIA director Michael Morell said the papers show the agency issued "long and loud" warnings, though insiders countered that a lack of specific timing or targets, and limited resources devoted to counterterrorism, hampered any response. The release coincided with the anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero, attended by Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden, where 9/11 widow Terry Strada renewed calls for successive administrations, including the current one, to release unredacted files on Saudi Arabia's alleged links to the attackers.
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In short
- CIA files show 1998 warning bin Laden wanted to crash bomb-laden plane into US city
- 71 declassified documents mark 9/11's 25th anniversary, largest such release
- 9/11 widow urges Trump to release unredacted files on Saudi Arabia's alleged role
How this story developed
- 2 months ago Newly declassified CIA files show that Bill Clinton's White House was warned as early as September 1998 that Osama bin Laden wanted to fly a bomb-laden aircraft into an American city, naming Washington DC as a target three years before al-Qaeda hijackers struck the Pentagon.
- 2 months ago The 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks has brought scrutiny of critical intelligence lapses that preceded the hijackings.
- 2 months ago Newly declassified CIA files reveal that Bill Clinton's White House was warned as early as September 1998 that Osama bin Laden intended to crash a bomb-laden aircraft into an American city, with Washington DC identified as a likely target three years before the September 11 attacks.
- Fox News USS Cole commander recalls chilling 9/11 warning at CIA just 20 minutes before first plane hit
- Daily Mail Ticket agent who checked in 9/11 hijackers admits he didn’t ‘listen to his gut’ when he thought they were terrorists
- Daily Mail How Queen Elizabeth II broke royal protocol after 9/11 and moved a grieving America by playing the Star-Spangled Banner outside Buckingham Palace
- Daily Mail Miracle of the 28 children who escaped 9/11… and the hero World Trade Center daycare teacher who saved them
- Daily Mail Counterterrorism expert’s unheeded al-Qaeda predictions preceded his Twin Towers death
- Daily Mail Bombshell CIA 9/11 files lay bare Bill Clinton’s horrific Bin Laden mistake…as ex-president grimly faces families at Ground Zero
Full account
Twenty-five years on from the September 11 attacks, newly surfaced testimony and declassified material are sharpening a familiar but still painful question: how much of the plot might have been spotted in time. On the morning of 11 September 2001, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers seized four passenger aircraft, killing 2,977 people, including 67 Britons, in the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. A quarter of a century later, accounts from those who brushed against the plotters beforehand, those who lived through the chaos on the ground, and the diplomatic response that followed are being revisited together, painting a fuller picture of missed warnings, individual bravery and an outpouring of international sympathy.
Among the most poignant of these accounts is that of John O'Neill, a senior FBI counter-terrorism officer who had spent years sounding the alarm over Osama bin Laden's network, only to grow so frustrated with the bureau's response that he resigned shortly before the attacks. In a grim twist, he had just taken up a new post as head of security at the World Trade Center, and was killed in the towers he had moved to protect. O'Neill was known as a flamboyant and unconventional figure within the FBI, and reporting since his death has also dwelt on the tangled personal life he kept hidden from colleagues, including several concurrent relationships that only came to light afterwards. His story is frequently held up as emblematic of intelligence warnings that failed to translate into action.
A similar sense of hindsight and haunting doubt runs through the account of Michael Tuohey, a ticket agent who checked in hijackers Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari at Portland International Jetport in Maine on the morning of the attacks. Now 80, Tuohey has said he found the pair's behaviour and Atta's curtness unsettling at the time, but felt unable to act on his suspicions given rules against passenger profiling. He has since described being troubled by the thought that raising the alarm might, however uncertainly, have changed the course of events, even as he acknowledges there was no way of knowing for certain at the time.
Alongside these stories of warnings unheeded, other testimony has focused on the courage shown amid the chaos, and the solidarity shown from abroad. Staff at a daycare centre inside the World Trade Center complex, including teacher Tara Jones, are credited with shepherding all 28 infants and young children in their care to safety after their planned evacuation route was blocked, improvising a new path out through the smoke and panic. Thousands of miles away, Britain's response became a defining image of transatlantic solidarity: two days after the attacks, Queen Elizabeth II ordered the Band of the Coldstream Guards to play the Star-Spangled Banner during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, breaking centuries of royal protocol, and days later she departed from custom again by joining in the singing of the American anthem at a memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral, telling the American people that grief was 'the price we pay for love.'
Where outlets differ
From the full account, which is AI-written from the sources:
The reports place emphasis on quite different facets of the story: one centres on institutional and intelligence failures (O'Neill's ignored warnings, Tuohey's unacted-upon suspicions), another on grassroots civilian heroism (the daycare evacuation), and another on state-level diplomatic symbolism (the Queen's gestures of solidarity).
The O'Neill account is notably more personal and less flattering in tone than the others, dwelling at length on his private life and contradictions of character alongside his professional warnings, whereas the Tuohey and daycare accounts are framed straightforwardly around the individuals' actions on the day.
The Tuohey story frames the missed warning as constrained by anti-profiling rules and uncertainty over whether intervention would have made any difference, a more equivocal framing than the narrative of clear-cut institutional failure suggested by the O'Neill story.
The royal tribute account is the only one addressing the international and diplomatic dimension of the attacks' aftermath, in contrast to the other three sources, which focus on individuals directly involved in the events in the United States.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Those who argue the warnings were culpably ignored point to a clear paper trail: as early as 1998 analysts flagged bin Laden's ambition to fly a bomb-laden aircraft into an American city and named Washington DC specifically, followed by repeated strategic warnings through 2000 and a flurry of 2001 briefings including a July memo on a postponed 'imminent' operation. From this vantage, successive administrations had years of cumulative signal that a catastrophic attack was plausible, and the moral duty of government to protect its citizens meant more should have been done to harden defences, disrupt al-Qaeda, or press allies such as Saudi Arabia, regardless of how the details were murky.
The case against
Those defending the administrations' record argue that raw warnings are not the same as actionable intelligence, and that policymakers cannot mobilise the machinery of state, including military action, aviation security overhauls or diplomatic confrontation, on the basis of vague, uncorroborated reporting from questionable sources lacking any specific timing, method or target. From this perspective, hindsight makes scattered strategic warnings look like an unmissable pattern, but at the time officials faced a flood of threat reporting on many fronts, and demanding pre-emptive action on every plausible worst case would have been neither realistic nor a responsible use of limited resources and legal authority.
Explained simply
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on 11 September 2001, when al-Qaeda hijackers flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, was later identified as the mastermind, prompting a US-led "war on terror" that shaped global politics for decades. On the 25th anniversary, attention has turned to whether the attacks could have been foreseen or prevented.
Key figures in this reassessment include John O'Neill, an FBI counterterrorism specialist who had long warned about al-Qaeda before leaving the bureau shortly before the attacks, and Kirk Lippold, a Navy officer who flagged suspicious activity to the CIA just before the first plane hit. Newly declassified CIA documents reportedly show that US officials were warned as early as 1998 that bin Laden wanted to use aircraft as weapons, raising questions about how such intelligence was handled at the time.
Beyond the intelligence debate, the anniversary has also drawn attention to individual stories from that day, including accounts of civilians helping others to safety, and to expressions of international sympathy for the United States, such as gestures made by foreign governments and institutions in the attacks' aftermath. Together these strands, institutional scrutiny and personal or diplomatic responses, form the basis of ongoing reflection on the day's legacy.
Coverage · 6 sources
Bias meters
From 6 rated sources.
- Daily MailRightHow Queen Elizabeth II broke royal protocol after 9/11 and moved a grieving America by playing the Star-Spangled Banner outside Buckingham Palace
- Daily MailRightCounterterrorism expert’s unheeded al-Qaeda predictions preceded his Twin Towers death
- Daily MailRightTicket agent who checked in 9/11 hijackers admits he didn’t ‘listen to his gut’ when he thought they were terrorists
- Daily MailRightMiracle of the 28 children who escaped 9/11… and the hero World Trade Center daycare teacher who saved them
- Fox NewsFar rightUSS Cole commander recalls chilling 9/11 warning at CIA just 20 minutes before first plane hit
- Daily MailRightBombshell CIA 9/11 files lay bare Bill Clinton’s horrific Bin Laden mistake…as ex-president grimly faces families at Ground Zero
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