US President George W. Bush was warned more than one month before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that al-Qaida planned an attack within the Untied States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a declassified document showed Saturday.
The document released by the White House said as currently as May 2001 "a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives."
"FBI information...indicates patterns of suspicious activity inthis country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York," said the document Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Texas on Aug. 6, 2001.
"Clandestine, foreign government and media reports indicate BinLadin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US," said the document which was declassified under the pressure from an independent commission looking into the Sept.11 attacks.
The failed millennium plan to strike Canada in 1999 was part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to attack the United States, said the document. "The convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself," it noted.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the al Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect an al Qaeda attack within US borders.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has brought up the document frequently Thursday during her three-hour public testimony before an independent commission which is investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Source: Xinhua