1998 CIA hijacking threat document to be released

CIA's 1998 warning to be released
Friday, July 16, 2004 CNN

A 1998 CIA document warned Clinton of possible hijackings and al Qaeda's links.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks will release a 1998 CIA document to then President Bill Clinton that warned of possible hijackings of airliners and will discuss al Qaeda links to Iran in its report, government officials said Friday.

The bipartisan commission has been investigating government failures related to the 2001 hijacked plane attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people died, and is expected to release its final report next week.

Included in the report will be a declassified version of a 1998 President's Daily Brief, a highly secret document that only a select group of government officials ever see.

It will be the second such document to be made public under commission pressure.

An August 6, 2001, report to President Bush titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" was released by the White House in April under pressure from the commission.

That CIA report that Bush received a month before the attacks made reference to the 1998 document to be revealed next week as containing "sensational threat reporting" that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of extremists jailed in the United States.

Philip Zelikow, executive staff director at the commission, described the President's Daily Brief given to Clinton as "a threat report about a possible hijacking in order to take hostages and secure the release of prisoners."

He told Reuters it referred to a specific hijacking threat in the United States. The commission report will also "describe an energetic response to that (1998) report," Zelikow said.

Other government sources told Reuters the commission report would discuss al Qaeda links to Pakistan and Iran and mention that some of the September 11 hijackers transited through Iran on the way to the United States.

TIME Magazine reported on its website Friday that a U.S. official told the magazine the commission uncovered evidence suggesting between eight and 10 of the 14 hijackers involved in gaining control of the four aircraft used on September 11 passed through Iran in the period from October 2000 to February 2001. (Full story)

The senior official also told TIME the report will note that Iranian officials approached al-Qaeda leadership after the bombing of the USS Cole and proposed a collaborative relationship in future attacks on the U.S. But that offer was turned down by bin Laden because he did not want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia, TIME reported.

The sources told Reuters there was no evidence that Iran helped al Qaeda with the September 11 attacks in which four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.