The brief warned, 36 days before the September 11 attacks, of terrorism threats from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, including "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for a hijacking" of U.S.

This response, however, came from a separate PDB linked to Bin Laden from several months earlier.

During 2001, CIA analysts produced several reports warning of imminent attacks by Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Senior officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and staff from Donald Rumsfeld's office at the Department of Defense, questioned whether these reports might not be deception on the part of al-Qaeda, purposely designed to needlessly expend resources in response.

[1] In response to accusations that the administration failed to act on the contents of the briefing, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and General Richard Myers emphasized that the CIA's PDB did not warn the president of a specific new threat but "contained historical information based on old reporting.