WASHINGTON — The CIA warned as early as 1995 that Islamic
extremists were likely to attack U.S. aviation, Washington
landmarks or Wall Street and by 1997 had identified Osama bin Laden
as an emerging threat on U.S. soil, a senior intelligence official
said Thursday.

The official took the rare step of disclosing information in the
closely held National Intelligence Estimate for those two years to
counter criticisms in a staff report released Wednesday by the
independent commission examining pre-Sept. 11 intelligence
failures.

That staff report accused the CIA of failing to recognize
al-Qaida as a formal terrorist organization until 1999 and mostly
regarding bin Laden as a financier instead of a terrorist leader
during much of the 1990s.

But the U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on condition
of anonymity, said the 1997 National Intelligence Estimate produced
by the CIA mentioned bin Laden by name as an emerging terrorist
threat on its first page. The National Intelligence Estimate is
distributed to the president and senior executive branch and
congressional intelligence officials.

The 1997 assessment, which remains classified, “identified
bin Laden and his followers and threats they were making and said
it might portend attacks inside the United States,” the
official said.

Philip Zelikow, executive director of the Sept. 11 commission,
confirmed the 1997 warning about bin Laden but said it was only two
sentences long and lacked any strategic analysis on how to address
the threat. “We were well aware of the information and the
staff stands by exactly what it says,” he said.

The intelligence official also said that while the 1995
intelligence assessment did not mention bin Laden or al-Qaida by
name, it clearly warned that Islamic terrorists were intent on
striking specific targets inside the United States like those hit
on Sept. 11, 2001.

The report specifically warned that civil aviation, Washington
landmarks such as the White House and Capitol and buildings on Wall
Street were at the greatest risk of a domestic terror attack by
Muslim extremists, the official said.

Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin testified Wednesday that by
early 1996 his agency had developed enough concern about bin Laden
to create a special unit to focus on his threat. “We were
very focused on this issue,” McLaughlin told the
commission.

The commission’s report did credit the CIA after 1997 with
collecting vast amounts of intelligence on bin Laden and al-Qaida,
which resulted in thousands of individual reports circulated at the
highest levels of government. These carried titles such as
“Bin Laden Threatening to Attack U.S. Aircraft” in June
1998 and “Bin Laden’s Interest in Biological and
Radiological Weapons” in February 2001.

Despite this intelligence, the CIA never produced an
authoritative summary of al-Qaida’s involvement in past
terrorist attacks, didn’t formally recognize al-Qaida as a
group until 1999 and did not fully appreciate bin Laden’s
role as the leader of a growing extremist movement, the commission
said.

“There was no comprehensive estimate of the enemy,”
the commission report alleged.

But the senior intelligence official said the commission report
failed to mention that CIA had produced large numbers of analytical
reports on the growth, capabilities, structure and threats posed by
al-Qaida throughout the late 1990s and those detailed reports were
distributed to the front lines of terror-fighting agencies.

The CIA most frequently provided these individual and highly
detailed analyses to the White House Counterterrorism Security
Group charged with formulating anti-terrorism policies and
responses, the official said.
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