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Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 (last updated April 11, 2004)
Perhaps the most significant piece of new information from the April 8, 2004 hearing of the 9-11 Commission was that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that President George W. Bush received a briefing on August 6, 2001 that was entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." This briefing was subsequently declassified and released on April 10, 2004. The memo notes that FBI information "indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York" and a call in May 2001 that "a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
In possible contrast, Rice told the press in May 2002 that this report was "not a warning briefing, but an analytic report" and said that "there was no specific time, place or method mentioned" (transcript on-line here).
The full text of the briefing follows:
Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the lighting to America."
| After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a REDACTED service.
An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an REDACTED service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike. |
The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Rassam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.
| Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation. |
Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar as Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
Al-Qa'ida members - including some who are US citizens - have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
| A clandestine source said in 1996 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks. |
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a REDACTED service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.
Sources: Findlaw.com has a version of the briefing on-line here.
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