Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, the CIA has opened its vault — and what’s inside is chilling.

On Friday, the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on American soil, the agency released 69 newly declassified presidential intelligence briefs, shedding new light on what the CIA told Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in the years leading up to 9/11.

One document stands out above all others.

The 1998 Warning

A report sent to President Bill Clinton in 1998 warned that al-Qaida “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a U.S. city”.

That’s not a retrospective analysis. That’s a direct warning, delivered to the Oval Office, three years before hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Another document, sent to Clinton before al-Qaida’s attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, outlined the group’s aim of attacking the United States — and assessed that goal as plausible.

Ratcliffe: “They Did Not Break Us”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the release was meant to honor both those killed on September 11 and the CIA officers who gave their lives in the war on terror.

“Twenty-five years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our nation, but they did not break us,” Ratcliffe said in a written statement. “Generations of C.I.A. officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring Al Qaeda would never again harm our country”.

Ratcliffe described the release as an “act of exceptional transparency” and the agency’s single largest release of declassified presidential daily briefs — the highly classified intelligence reports prepared for the nation’s most senior leaders.

What the Documents Reveal

The briefs trace the CIA’s tracking of Osama bin Laden’s movements, support systems, and the growing threat posed by al-Qaida throughout the late 1990s and into 2001.

Summer 1999: A document cautioned that intelligence collected on al-Qaida could be a deception. “The diverse targets mentioned in the reporting, combined with a high incidence of Bin Ladin-related walk-ins, suggest a deliberate effort to mislead us,” the CIA wrote, using the government’s spelling for bin Laden.

July 2001: A report said an imminent attack by bin Laden’s organization had been postponed — but that he could be preparing another attack.

September 12, 2001: A report issued the day after the attacks indicated a source said the attacks had been planned for two years and had also targeted the U.S. Capitol.

Weeks before 9/11: A document detailed how al-Qaida’s “flexible operational decision making and broad definition of acceptable targets enable the group to adjust plans to changing conditions”.

The Uncomfortable Truth

The documents show the CIA repeatedly warned of the threat bin Laden posed to the United States. But analysts told The New York Times that terrorism was not a primary focus until after 9/11 — a shift reflected in the tone and urgency of the briefings.

That’s the painful takeaway. The warnings were there. The intelligence existed. But the focus wasn’t.

One counterterrorism analyst told the Times that the CIA learned it had to think more creatively after the attacks, and stressed that the agency has come a long way in 25 years.

A Second Document Release

The CIA release wasn’t the only declassification on Friday. The National Archives also released a separate batch of documents, including interviews with national security officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations. That batch was a product of the 9/11 Commission, which probed the attacks from 2002 to 2004.

Together, the two releases provide the most comprehensive picture yet of what the U.S. government knew — and when it knew it.

The Bottom Line

Twenty-five years later, the question that has haunted America since that September morning remains unanswered: Could 9/11 have been prevented?

The documents released Friday don’t answer that question definitively. But they do make one thing clear: the warning signs were there, in black and white, delivered directly to the president of the United States.

The full archive is now public. And the history is there for anyone to read.