From the story files
A quarter century later, crucial questions about 9/11 remain unanswered. Among them: What warnings did Presidents Bush and Clinton receive about al Qaeda plans to attack the homeland. The federal board that has been trying since 2021 to pry loose what the two were told about Osama bin Laden says the 25th anniversary of the attacks and declassification efforts by the Trump Administration should, and perhaps will, inspire action to open the files.
"The Board has long advocated for honoring the 9-11 Commission's stated intent that the records of its work be declassified and released to the fullest extent possible. The 25th Anniversary of 9-11, coming at a time of unprecedented Presidential action and intense Congressional interest in declassification efforts that serve critical public interests, provides the best opportunity yet for this information to finally see the light of day."
That is the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), answering questions from Need to Share News (see more about the acronyms and agencies mentioned in this report below). The PIDB wrote to President Trump on June 30 urging review of the same records.
The document the PIDB wants was produced in 2004 and includes about 7,000 words. 9/11 Commission leaders -- Commissioner Jamie Gorelick and Executive Director Philip Zelikow – reviewed more than 300 relevant President's Daily Brief (PDB) articles on bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban from the three years before the attacks. They were among a very small number of people ever allowed to see them. Their summary is the closest thing that exists to a plain-language account of what the presidents were warned about.
The PIDB says it’s classified TOP SECRET, protected under a Special Access Program (popularly known as “above top secret”), and held by the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
The board asked for it in July 2021. The library said no. The board appealed in June 2022. Four years later the appeal is still pending, and the Board has now identified it as ISCAP case 2022-008.
"Yes, that is correct," Michael D. Thomas said in written answers to us late last month. "The PIDB appealed its request for mandatory declassification review to the ISCAP in June 2022 and it was assigned case number 2022-008." Asked its status, he said: "This appeal is currently under active adjudication with the ISCAP." The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, or ISCAP, is an executive-branch review body, and the closest thing the classification system has to a court. See more below.
Thomas wears two hats. He advocates for declassification as Executive Secretary of the PIDB —the Congress-created panel that advises the President on releasing historically important classified records—and runs the declassification appeals process at the ISCAP, where federal-agency representatives vote on whether to release records. He previously served as National Security Council (NSC) Director for Access Management and in transparency roles at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the U.S. intelligence community’s coordinating headquarters.
So how about the 300 PDBs reviewed for the summary -- could they be released individually? It’s not clear anybody has asked, but Thomas has discouraging news for those who might. Speaking for the appeals panel, he says a request broad enough to cover all the PDBs is unlikely to be accepted.
"The ISCAP does not presently have any appeals for the PDBs that were reviewed in the compilation of the PDB Summary. Mandatory declassification review requests (MDRs) to agencies, from which ISCAP appeals originate, are required to be narrow in scope. Broadly framed requests, such as PDB articles from 1998 to 2001, are unlikely to be accepted."
Asked why the appeal on the summary has taken four years, he answered for the panel again:
"The ISCAP has a substantial docket of cases -- well over 1,000 appeals are active in some stage of its review process. Cases marked as 'Materials Received from Agency,' like 2022-008, are eligible for active adjudication by the Panel. This process includes a substantial amount of pre-coordination with the interagency equity holders on the contents of the records before an appeal is formally brought forward to the Panel for a decision."
The panel keeps a public log of pending appeals. The copy obtained by Need to Share News, with statuses updated Jan. 7, 2025, lists 1,255 of them. Case 2022-008 appears there, filed June 23, 2022 against the Bush library and marked "Materials Received from Agency" — meaning the panel has the document in hand.
The board, for its part, explained why it went after the summary rather than the briefings:
"We have long advocated for the release of the PDB summary document, which we expect will enable a more effective, incisive approach to potential declassification of the PDBs from the time period in question. Those records would likely number more than a thousand, and their evaluation for release would entail the review of tens of thousands of pages of some of the most highly sensitive intelligence gathered by the American government."
Who has a role in release
Several agencies and an appeals panel shape whether any of this becomes public. They do not hold the same kind of authority.
The Public Interest Declassification Board. Nine members, created by Congress in 2000. It recommends what the government should release. It cannot declassify anything itself. It is the party pushing — it asked for the summary and filed the appeal.
The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, or ISCAP. An executive-branch review body, and the closest thing the classification system has to a court. When an agency refuses to declassify a document, this is where the refusal is appealed. Representatives of State, Defense, Justice, the National Archives, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Adviser sit on it; the CIA may add a temporary voting representative when CIA-originated information is at issue. It decides.
The Information Security Oversight Office. Part of the National Archives. It runs classification policy for the whole government and staffs both bodies above. Michael Thomas directs it and is executive secretary of both, which is why one official answers for both sides of this dispute.
The National Archives, the CIA and other agencies with classified equities. The Archives holds the records and administers access; the Bush Library, which said no, is part of it. Agencies with classified equities are consulted on their own information. Responsibility for producing the daily brief moved from the Director of Central Intelligence to the Director of National Intelligence in 2005. Those agencies hold the underlying intelligence and have the most to protect.
What is a President's Daily Brief?
The most closely held intelligence document the United States produces: six to eight short articles delivered each morning to the President and a very small circle of senior officials. In the Bush years it was hand-carried, briefed in person and taken back. It is the clearest record of what a president was told and when, which is what makes it valuable to historians. Few individual brief articles from after January 1977 have ever been made public. The two below are exceptional.
Aug. 6, 2001. Delivered to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, 36 days before the attacks. Marked "For the President Only." Declassified April 10, 2004.
Its release was not the product of any routine process. On April 8, 2004, Richard Ben-Veniste asked Condoleezza Rice at a public hearing to recall the title. She argued it was not a warning: "It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting." The document says FBI information indicated "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks," and that the bureau had roughly 70 full field investigations underway it considered bin Laden-related. Two days after the hearing the White House declassified it, with an order stating the action "shall not be deemed to constitute any precedent concerning any future declassification or release of any other PDB." Later individual releases appear to have been rare.
The second public example is a Dec. 4, 1998 item briefed to President Clinton, titled "Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks." It reported that some members of bin Laden's network had received hijack training. What lies between is classified.
Some additional details have been released based on a different series of federal intelligence briefings that often include similar information to the PDB.
One question the summary might shed light on
In May 1998 the CIA had a plan to capture bin Laden outside Kandahar. It was never carried out, and the Commission could not establish who killed it. "Impressions vary as to who actually decided not to proceed with the operation," its report says. Four senior officials gave four accounts. Richard Clarke called the plan "half-assed." The chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit believed the decision came at cabinet level. Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt thought it was Sandy Berger's doing, perhaps on George Tenet's advice. Tenet said he alone turned it off and told Berger afterward. Berger said it never reached the White House at all.
Did the Clinton administration have bin Laden in its grasp and lose its nerve? Or is that unfair — a plan genuinely too risky, killed for sound reasons? We still don't know, and the reason we don't know is that the documents that would settle it are closed. Who was told what, and on which morning, is exactly what a daily brief records.
Information beyond the PDBs that might settle the issue remains classified, along with much more on 9/11.
What else is still secret
A major remaining set is the Commission's own files. The National Archives holds roughly 570 cubic feet of them in Record Group 148 and says "a large percentage" are national security classified. Because the Commission was part of the legislative branch, its records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act — mandatory declassification review is the way in — and the Archives says the unreleased portion is "processed as documents are requested." The catalog description of the interview series names the controlling instrument: a letter Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton sent the Archivist on Aug. 20, 2004, the day before the Commission dissolved, directing that material be withheld if it remains classified, if it is private information the Commission promised to protect, or if release is otherwise barred by law.
Commission staff conducted more than 1,200 fact-finding interviews, and the Archives publishes an index of the resulting memoranda with a four-letter key: O for open, R for redacted, H for withheld, P for pending. A review by Need to Share News of that series counted 1,408 interview and memorandum entries, of which 186 are marked H and 101 P. For many of the P entries the public name field itself reads "[Classification Review Pending]," so a reader cannot tell whose interview is being held. Those tallies are this publication's count of catalog entries, not an Archives figure, and the access labels do not by themselves establish how much remains classified. Among the named withholds is Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director general of Britain's MI5.
The Board keeps its own list of the interviews it most wants opened. As of Sept. 1 it names Condoleezza Rice, Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke, Michael Scheuer and George Tenet. The memoranda of the Commission's interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney were released in November 2022.
The summary is not part of that pile. It is a presidential record held at the Bush Library, governed by the Presidential Records Act and Executive Order 13526 — a different legal regime, with a different set of reviewers. Under that order, records created in 2001 reach their 25-year automatic declassification review this year, which is what gives the anniversary argument its teeth.
On Aug. 17 Thomas signed guidance directing staff to identify appeals suitable for precedent-setting decisions and to consider remanding cases that have stalled — a step that could, in principle, reach this one.
If you’re interested in declassification, check out the non-profit POW Investigative Project (PIP), where this writer is the volunteer president. The PIP and POW/MIA have spent years suing the federal government to release information on US POWs possibly retained after the Korea, Cold and Vietnam Wars. It has identified still-classified POW/MIA records going back to at least 1951.
Note on sources
Michael D. Thomas, written responses to Need to Share News, Aug. 28, 2026, answering separately as executive secretary of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel and on behalf of the Public Interest Declassification Board. Copies in the author's possession; not posted publicly.
ISCAP appeal 2022-008: identified by Thomas, Aug. 28, 2026. The docket entry — filed June 23, 2022, source listed as the Bush library, status "Materials Received from Agency" — is from the ISCAP pending appeals log obtained by Need to Share News, statuses updated Jan. 7, 2025. The panel describes the log and its status categories at https://www.archives.gov/declassification/iscap/status-log-description.html
The summary's length, classification and custody, and the classified interview transcripts, as described by the Public Interest Declassification Board: https://transforming-classification.blogs.archives.gov/2026/02/23/high-priority-9-11-records-a-closer-look ; the Board's 2021 recommendation: https://transforming-classification.blogs.archives.gov/2021/08/11/pidb-recommends-the-prioritized-declassification-of-9-11-records/
ISCAP membership and procedures: https://www.archives.gov/declassification/iscap . Executive Order 13526 as codified: https://www.archives.gov/about/laws/appendix/13526.html . PIDB 2021 recommendation letter: https://www.archives.gov/files/pidb/recommendations/pidb-potus-letter-9-11-recommendations-final-1.pdf
ISOO guidance of Aug. 17, 2026: https://isoo-overview.blogs.archives.gov/2026/08/18/reforming-the-court-of-last-resort-for-declassification-decisions/ . Executive Order 13526: https://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/cnsi-eo.html
President's Daily Brief, Aug. 6, 2001: https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/pdb080601.pdf . Dec. 4, 1998: https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/pdb120498.html — text only; no facsimile located. Rice testimony, April 8, 2004: https://9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing9/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-04-08.htm
The 9/11 Commission Report: https://9-11commission.gov/report/ . The canceled 1998 capture plan is in Chapter 4, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT-10.pdf . The count of more than 300 articles reviewed is at Chapter 8, endnote 2.
9/11 Commission records: National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/research/9-11 — approximately 570 cubic feet in Record Group 148; "a large percentage" national security classified; not subject to FOIA because the Commission was part of the legislative branch; unreleased portion "processed as documents are requested."
Memoranda for the record index and the O/R/H/P status key, and the figure of more than 1,200 fact-finding interviews: https://www.archives.gov/research/9-11/commission-memoranda.html , page last reviewed Aug. 26, 2025. The Kean-Hamilton access letter of Aug. 20, 2004 is named in the catalog description of the interview series, NAID 2524787, https://catalog.archives.gov
The counts of 1,408 entries, 186 marked H and 101 marked P are a Need to Share News review of that series in the online catalog — this publication's tally of catalog entries, not an Archives statistic; the access labels alone do not establish how much remains classified.
The Board's high-priority interview list, its June 30, 2026 letter to President Trump and the phrase "an important moment of opportunity": https://transforming-classification.blogs.archives.gov/2026/09/01/declassifying-high-priority-9-11-records/ . The Bush and Cheney memoranda were released Nov. 9, 2022: https://transforming-classification.blogs.archives.gov/2022/11/09/declassified-9-11-commission-interviews-with-bush-and-cheney/
Mark Sauter is a journalist and co-author of Homeland Security: A Complete Guide (McGraw Hill). He experienced the Sept. 11 attacks while living in downtown Manhattan.