WASHINGTON — A month before the Sept. 11 attacks, senior CIA officials warned President Bush that members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack airplanes, prompting the White House to issue an alert to U.S. law enforcement agencies, officials said Wednesday.
White House and CIA officials said the intelligence behind the warning was not specific, however, and that nothing then available hinted at Bin Laden's plot to seize four passenger jets and use them as weapons.
But the latest indication of another possible missed signal raised fresh concerns as to whether U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and aviation agencies were sufficiently on guard to prevent an attack on U.S. soil.
House and Senate committees have launched a joint investigation into how America's vast intelligence agencies failed to detect the plot. Other congressional committees are looking into why the FBI ignored an internal memo in July that specifically warned that Bin Laden's followers could be training at U.S. flight schools.
The CIA warning of a possible hijacking, first reported Wednesday night by CBS News, indicates for the first time that the White House also may have failed to recognize the imminent threat posed by Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
Officials said Bush was told of the possibility of a hijacking in early August during a regular morning intelligence report, a highly classified written and oral presentation known as the President's Daily Brief. Bush was on vacation at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, at the time.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Wednesday that the information was not clear enough to prevent the September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, however.
"There was of course an awareness by the government, including the president, of Osama bin Laden and the threat he posed in the United States and around the world," Fleischer said.
But he said that Bush was warned about "hijackings in the traditional sense, not suicide bombers using airplanes as missiles."
Fleischer said the administration notified domestic law enforcement agencies of a possible hijacking threat, but did not announce the alert to the public.
A senior intelligence official said Bush was told that hijackings were "among the range of possibilities" that Al Qaeda might use, as other Islamic militants had hijacked planes in the recent past.
