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Case in point, just going off of the reports here it would have been hard to predict what happened. They were concerned about Bin Laden starting civil wars, taking embassies, launching a biological attack, cells in Europe, etc. And even their preliminary reports about a possible plane hijacking in the US presumed it would be a simple quid pro quo for prisoner releases.
I'm worried this release is being thinly veiled as an attack on previous administrations. But it should be pointed out that the current administration eschews intelligence entirely and has no qualms about worsening the country's current security posture.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-i... (gift article)
This and the parent comment might be correct, but also, the US has one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world and the US defence budget dwarfs everyone else’s.
They failed spectacularly in the role they exist to perform. This deserves criticism.
This all goes to show that either the budgets are overblown or inefficiently used, in any case who's in charge is responsible.
'Keeping Americans safe' is not on their agenda. If it were, they wouldn't be sticking America's hand into Middle Eastern quagmires, like the one that radicalized OBL and provided a training ground for his friends and allies. If it were, they wouldn't be working half as hard in demonstrating to hundreds of millions of people that yes, America does, in fact, mean them harm, and is happy to inflict that harm on them.
They did a reorg, and Richard Clarke, who was the terrorism and Bin Laden “guy” was in effect demoted and lost access to the president.
The timing was bad for the US. Clinton was deeply personally engaged in this stuff. Bush was an arms length guy who delegated. Personally, I think Bin Laden and his cronies had a really good read or an instinct in this dynamic.
To be useful, information doesn't just have to have a good false negative rate, it also has to have a good false positive rate, and be specific. Otherwise its useless as you can't persue every possible lead.
That's not fair, they happily hand over intelligence briefings to people with no clearances or vetting whatsoever.
& they sat on it.
that's gross negligence honestly - if your adversary seems competent - you've to destroy them at the earliest chance before they amass more resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6856550
I would like to plainly say something that is likely unpopular: the CIA has been relatively great in the last ~30 years for the USA, and the world. They do real research, state facts, and when asked, even sometimes publicly speak out against the geopolitical dumbasses leading their own country. They are often circumvented and ignored due to politics, which usually makes us all suffer. Our politicians ignore them, go around them, and then we all somehow blame them.
It's heartening.
It's not always obvious because progress comes in fits and starts, and sometimes we move in very different directions, but as Dr. King said: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice".
There is one PDB per day. One. It is a presentation, not just a sheet of paper. And it's assembled by a team who are producing something for someone who (normally) is the most scheduled person alive save astronauts, who are well aware of that person's fixed resources in terms of time and attention.
Acting like the amount of information presented, especially to someone with extensive executive experience as the governor of Texas, is somehow overwhelming, is beyond disingenuous.
The important context missing here is that Bush was infamous for treating the PDBs like a hassle he didn't want to have to deal with.
The important context missing here is that the terrorists practically put up a neon flashing sign saying "WE WANT TO HIJACK AIRLINERS." They literally told instructors they only cared about specific phases of flight - I think one said "we don't need to know how to land." You know, the hardest part of flying a plane?
The important context missing here is that the WTC attack was used to justify a massive amount of domestic spying.
The last important context missing is that the current president has a very similar attitude toward almost any form of briefing, and entered us into a war largely because he didn't understand nuclear weapons treaties and did not listen to anyone who told him that a weapons treaty having an end date is normal - so the treaty can be revised and renegotiated to meet changes in both countries and the rest of the world. You-know-who thought it was a weakness and the US was getting screwed.
The important context missing here is that Bush was only president for about 8 months when 9/11 happened, and most of the released PDBs were presented to his predecessor, Clinton.
> Acting like the amount of information presented, especially to someone with extensive executive experience as the governor of Texas, is somehow overwhelming, is beyond disingenuous.
First of all, the vast majority of the released files were under Clinton's tenure - it had nothing to do with who was president.
Secondly, to your point these would have been in the form of small snippets in much larger briefings. If only 1-2 paragraphs of a 20 page PDB are related to a fringe terror cell in Afghanistan, it's obviously not going to get the same attention as the other 19 pages. And we're only talking about 71 PDBs over 3 years. It's not about being unable to ingest the information, it's about the massive amount of noise you have to deal with.
Thirdly, you can read for yourself in these documents that there was never any such large neon flashing sign except in retrospect. Planes and suicide attacks were not mentioned until August - less than a month before the attacks. And until then they were completely viewing it as a hostage or conventional bombing attack.
You don't have to predict exactly what's gonna happen to surveil or interfere with known terrorists you let into your own country, who you know are engaged in some sort of training having to do with aircraft hijackinng, and keep that from happening.
You should watch the Tucker Carlson 9/11 series. He does a good job picking up where Michal Moore left off in the mid 2000s (though they'd both probably be offended to hear me say that) and does so with the hindsight of 20yr of declassification and general hindsight that hadn't yet happened in the mid 2000s
The various agencies knew something was gonna happen. Nobody knew what or when or where exactly because the pieces hadn't been put together. They were all looking through their own little keyholes. They all should have seen enough to take action. But why didn't they? But it's pretty clear that the CIA and maybe some other intel agencies either through blunder or neglect or hubris had something to do with it.
Interesting to read but … why bother?
There is no reason that anyone should consider these briefs credible (I'm sure some details are truthy). At best, it's performative theater.
Because a number of the people associated with this are still alive on all sides.
1998-2001 was only 25-28 years ago, so a lot of sources are still alive or active sources as we speak, and in a number of cases now decisionmakers in theirs early-mid 60s.
It's the same way how a KGB liaison officer in 1989 Dresden ended up invading Ukraine 25 years later.
> Interesting to read but … why bother?
It still has academic value, and plenty of information to be garnered.
I think there should be a law that any info is fully public after like 20 years unless releasing it would put a specific person or named group in danger, like a source's identity but not the things they said. No vague talk about national security that can't be verified unless you have a clearance and is probably subjective anyway.
Yes, that includes nuclear weapon designs, hacking tool source code and every assassination plan ever dreamed up by some megalomaniac CIA officer. The system needs to go.
> the C.I.A.’s standard practice is to release them only after about 40 years, to ensure no sources are compromised and minimize any potential tension with allies.
So this was released much earlier than usual and that might be why it's more aggressively redacted
As the recent AI safety discourse should make clear, the set of information that potentially endangers people could be much broader than you'd naively expect.
They don't even release files about human trafficking rings (epstein). Pretty sure what you are suggesting is impossible.
From the outside, it even looks like Trump attacked Iran because of the epstein files. The war is causing more deaths and terror. And it is causing economic problems worldwide. Pretty sure US government legitimacy is at the lowest point in my lifetime.
I think you're referring to this one:
https://www.cia.gov/static/06-23-1998-Potential-Targets-for-...
Since it's redacted, we can only guess what's on the map, but looking at the various points preceding it there are a lot of specific location names that are redacted. If any were also on the map then it'd be kind of stupid to redact the name once, but not the other times they're included.
Almost like there was no reason to include them in the 'Axis of Evil' at a time when the US was providing cover for them in the fight against Taliban.
Iran also directly funded Shia terrorist groups in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. Al-Qaeda/ISIS were just the local Sunni variety, but with less state-backing and more decentralized.
By your logic, shouldn't we be enemies with Saudi Arabia and Israel, who have incubated and funded terrorists for much longer than Iran (80 years in the case of Israel)?
'Terror was justified' to establish Israel, Reuter, September 6, 1991
https://www.caymancompass.com/1991/09/06/terror-was-justifie...
Oh my, the CIA do comedy now.
Seems more like:
'the president said we had to flood the zone with aliens and UFO shit because he was desperate to continue to break the law in order to hide the Trump-Epstein files; if you think the sexual deviancy and assaults he bragged about were bad ...'
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-...
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/13/505348507/what-exactly-is-the...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/tulsi-gabbard-reveals-li...
Trump does get regular briefs several times a day, by Natalie Harp. Her job is to find flattering press reports, print them out for Trump, and hand them to him.[2] She has a backpack with a battery-powered printer for this when away from the White House.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/gabbard-c...
[2] archive.is/CFCQT
also Roy Cohn taught him reality doesn't matter, just make up any lie and repeat it to the very end until that's all people will respond to
now he's surrounded by people that only tell him what he wants to hear like his "human printer" with $45,000 "xmas gifts"
imagine if there was an actual attack now
he'd invade Canada, seriously, wouldn't matter who did it, he'd make up a reason and repeat it constantly until it's the only talking point
notice how we're not talking about the Epstein Files anymore?
SOB changed the topic enough times to make it slide out of the news