A senior Bin Ladin operative from Saudi Aravia was to visit IG counterparts in the US soon thereafter to discuss options—perhaps including an aircraft hijacking.”
On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, the Trump administration declassified documents that showed the Bush and Clinton administrations were aware of threats from Al Qaeda to use American passenger planes to undertake a strike on the United States.
There are over 100 pages of documents that were released and they are part of the presidential daily brief seen by Clinton and Bush from February 1998 through September 2001.
Though the documents are redacted, what they show is that US intelligence knew that the threat of turning American passenger planes into bombs was a possibility. In 1998, Osama bin Ladin, the mastermind of the attacks, had called for a terror strike on America, documents show.
"Reporting suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Shaykh 'Umar' Abd al-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, and Muhammad Sadiq Awda. One source quoted a senior member of the Gama'at al-Islamiyya (IG) saying that as of late October, the IG has completed planning for an operation in the US on behalf of Bin Ladin but that the operation was on hold. A senior Bin Ladin operative from Saudi Arabia was to visit IG counterparts in the US soon thereafter to discuss options—perhaps including an aircraft hijacking."
The documents reveal that "IG leader Islambouli in late September was planning to hijack a US airliner during the 'next couple of weeks' to free 'Abd al-Rahman and the other prisoners," according to a source. That source already revealed that "Bid Ladin might implement plans to hijack a US aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and that two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport."
Members of Bin Ladin's "network," the documents show, "have received hijack training," and he and his allies "are moving closer to implementing anti-US attacks at unspecified locations, but we do not know whether they are related to attacks on aircraft."
The 9/11 terror attacks were carried out by nine hijackers who took over 4 planes. Two of them were flown into the World Trade Centers in New York City while another crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth plane was believed to have been heading for the White House but the passengers aboard overpowered the hijackers and the plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone aboard.
2026 marks 25 years since those attacks were carried out and more than 3,000 people were killed, including hundreds of first responders who ran into the buildings to try to save people only to be crushed by falling towers themselves.
In the decades that have followed the attack, there have been countless theories and allegations that the government knew that something was coming and did not take adequate precautions or exhibit enough concern about that potentiality.
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