7/15/1995

In his October 17, 2002, testimony to the Joint Inquiry Committee investigating the 9/11 attacks, CIA Director George Tenet said that in July 1995, the CIA produced a National Intelligence Estimate for the Clinton Administration titled, ‘The Foreign Terrorist Threat in the United States.’ “Echoing the FBI’s language, the estimate called [World Trade Center bomber Ramzi] Yousef’s gang a ‘new breed’ of radical Sunni Islamic terrorist. This ‘new terrorist phenomenon’ involved fluid, transient, multinational groupings of Islamic extremists who saw the United States as their enemy, the estimate warned. It then speculated about future attacks inside the United States. ‘Several targets are especially at risk: national symbols such as the White House and the Capitol, and symbols of U.S. capitalism such as Wall Street,’ the estimate predicted. ‘We assess that civil aviation will figure prominently among possible terrorist targets in the United States. This stems from the increasing domestic threat posed by foreign terrorists, the continuing appeal of civil aviation as a target, and a domestic aviation security system [whose weaknesses have] been the focus of media attention.’ It was now clear that Yousef and his colleagues had developed their terrorist plans by studying American airline security procedures. ‘If terrorists operating in this country are similarly methodical, they will identify serious vulnerabilities in the security system for domestic flights.’ The National Intelligence Estimate made no mention of Osama bin Laden.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 279