CIA releases dozens of presidential daily briefs on bin Laden and al-Qaida before Sept. 11

Sev­er­al dozen pres­i­den­tial brief­ing doc­u­ments de­clas­si­fied Fri­day, the 25th an­niver­sary of the Sept. 11 at­tacks, de­tail in­tel­li­gence gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials had gath­ered about Osama bin Laden and al-Qai­da lead­ing up to the hi­jack­ings that killed near­ly 3,000 peo­ple and up­end­ed Amer­i­can na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The doc­u­ments il­lus­trate se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lysts’ track­ing of bin Laden’s move­ments and sup­port sys­tem, as well as con­cerns about pos­si­ble threats to U.S. tar­gets

Pro­claim­ing “an act of ex­cep­tion­al trans­paren­cy,” CIA Di­rec­tor John Rat­cliffe said the doc­u­ments were the agency’s sin­gle largest re­lease of de­clas­si­fied pres­i­den­tial dai­ly briefs — the high­ly clas­si­fied brief­ing pre­pared by the na­tion’s in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty for the gov­ern­ment’s most se­nior lead­ers.