Declassified CIA files show Bin Laden plotted UK attacks before 9/11

Newly released CIA documents reveal Osama bin Laden considered attacking Britain as early as 1998. The files were declassified to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Bin Laden had UK in his sights years before Twin Towers attack

Osama bin Laden was actively considering attacks on British soil as far back as 1998, according to newly declassified CIA documents, the Daily Express reports. The files were released by CIA director John Ratcliffe to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks and represent the single largest publication of classified material linked to the atrocity.

The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, among them 67 British citizens, and remain the deadliest terrorist attack on record, with victims from more than 90 nations.

A document dated 28 August 1998 stated that Bin Laden was examining options for strikes against the UK. It placed those considerations in the hours before the United States launched cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda bases in Sudan and Afghanistan — a response to the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. A further CIA memo from the end of 1998 recorded "strong indications that he would like to attack the US and allies such as the UK and Israel on their own soil".

The same tranche of documents contained an early reference to aviation as a potential attack method, noting "planning to hijack an aircraft" in connection with "impending anti-US terrorist operations" — a detail that would prove prescient three years later.

Britain was also identified in the files as a recruitment base for Al-Qaeda, alongside Pakistan, Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula. A separate document from August 1999 described Bin Laden's anger after two of his London-based operatives were arrested by British police. The file quoted him as expressing frustration at "the arrests of his senior procurement officer and the chief of his organisation in the UK", adding that his network's capabilities had been damaged as a result.

The final document in the release, dated 12 September 2001 — the day after the attacks — provided a situation report in which Bin Laden featured prominently. It indicated the operation had been planned over a two-year period and suggested the White House and a congressional building may also have been among the intended targets.

Ratcliffe described the publication as offering "a glimpse" into the CIA's "most sensitive intelligence from the years before and day after one of the nation's darkest moments". The attacks on 11 September 2001 saw passenger jets hijacked by Al-Qaeda operatives strike the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, bringing both buildings down, and the Pentagon outside Washington DC.

Source: Daily Express