The material contains much new information about the hunt before and after 9/11 for bin Laden, the development of the drone campaign in AfPak, and al-Qaida’s relationship with America’s ally, Pakistan. Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

Let’s start there. In 2000 and 2001, the CIA began using Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Afghanistan. “The idea of using UAVs originated in April 2000 as a result of a request from the NSC’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism to the CIA and the Department of Defense to come up with new ideas to go after the terrorists in Afghanistan,” a 2004 document summarizes. The Pentagon approved the plan for surveillance purposes.

And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. For the CIA, that meant trying to get Afghan tribal leaders and the Northern Alliance to kill or capture bin Laden, Elias-Sanborn says. “It was forced to be less of a kinetic operation,” she says. “It had to be only for surveillance, which was not what they considered an offensive posture.”

“Budget concerns … CT [counterterrorism] supplemental still at NSC-OMB [National Security Council – Office of Management and Budget] level,” an April 2000 document reads. “Need forward movement on supplemental soonest due to expected early recess due to conventions, campaigning and elections.” In addition, the Air Force told the CIA that if it lost a drone, the CIA would have to pay for it, which made the agency more reluctant to use the technology.

Still, the drone program began in September 2000. One drone swiftly twice observed an individual “most likely to have been Bin Laden.” But since the CIA only had permission to use the drones for intelligence gathering, it had no way to act on its findings. The agency submitted a proposal to the National Security Council staff in December 2000 that would have significantly expanded the program. “It was too late for the departing Clinton Administration to take action on this strategic request,” however. It wasn’t too late for the Bush administration, though. It just never did.

Former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has taken credit for the drone program that the Bush administration ignored. “Things like working to get an armed Predator that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important, working to get a strategy that would allow us to get better cooperation from Pakistan and from the Central Asians,” she said in 2006. “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida.” Rice claimed that the Bush administration continued the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policies, a claim the documents disprove. “If the administration wanted to get it done, I’m sure they could have gotten it done,” says Elias-Sanborn.

Many of the documents publicize for the first time what was first made clear in the 9/11 Commission: The White House received a truly remarkable amount of warnings that al-Qaida was trying to attack the United States. From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency. One from June called “Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” writes that “[redacted] expects Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” The famous August brief called “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US” is included. “Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here,” it says. During the entire month of August, President Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas — which tied with one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest vacation ever taken by a president. CIA Director George Tenet has said he didn’t speak to Bush once that month, describing the president as being “on leave.” Bush did not hold a Principals’ meeting on terrorism until September 4, 2001, having downgraded the meetings to a deputies’ meeting, which then-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has repeatedly said slowed down anti-Bin Laden efforts “enormously, by months.”

For all the information the documents reveal, one huge matter is conspicuously absent: torture. There are nearly 50 CIA documents relating to such matters as the interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the intelligence gleaned from him, and yet “none of them were declassified at all,” notes Elias-Sanborn. “Certainly, the CIA has a stake in revealing what they did,” and they clearly do not want to reveal their complicity in war crimes.

One last thing is worth mentioning from the documents published today: Anyone with any doubt that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dangerous to the United States is contradicting U.S. intelligence. “Violence between Israelis and the Palestinians, moreover is making Sunni extremists more willing to participate in attacks against US or Israeli interests,” the CIA wrote in February 2001. It is not the only piece of information revealed by the new documents that will be deeply uncomfortable for the Bush administration and hawks across the country.

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On the fateful September day nine years ago, Bush’s first inkling of the unfolding tragedy came as he walked into a classroom in Florida to read to a group of young children.

“On the short walk from the motorcade to the classroom, Karl Rove mentioned that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. That sounded strange. I envisioned a little propeller plane horribly lost,” writes Bush.

But then his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, called to tell him that what he thinks is a small plane is actually a commercial airliner.

“I was stunned. That plane must have had the worst pilot in the world. How could he possibly have flown into a skyscraper on a clear day? Maybe he had a heart attack,” writes Bush.

The president may have been stunned, but it did not stop him going ahead with the school visit. Then came the scene that astonished the rest of the world almost as much as the attacks themselves.

A presidential aide, Andrew Card, tells Bush that a second plane has hit. The president looks as though he has been paralysed by shock. For seven minutes he sits there before a group of children, immobile while America was under attack.

But Bush says he was thinking.

“I looked at the faces of the children in front of me. I thought about the contrast between the brutality of the attacks and the innocence of those children. Millions like them would soon be counting on me to protect them. I was determined not to let them down,” Bush writes.

“The reading lesson continued, but my mind raced far from the classroom. Who could have done this? How bad was the damage? What did the government need to do?”

Bush finally leaves the class and is ushered into another room to watch TV coverage of the attacks. The president’s first impulse is to get on television himself.

“I watched in horror as the footage of the second plane hitting the south tower replayed in slow motion. The huge fireball and explosion of smoke were worse than I had imagined. The country would be shaken, and I needed to get on TV right away,” he says.

He drafted a few words longhand and duly appeared to begin: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America …”

What followed was almost as damaging to Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as his stunned appearance at the school. The president disappeared into the sky on Air Force One and was not heard from by ordinary Americans for hours as the full horror of the assault unfolded.

Bush says he was settling into his seat as news of the third plane crash, at the Pentagon, came in. “My blood was boiling. We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass.” Then he prayed.

Bush remained in the air for hours, giving orders to his vice-president, Dick Cheney, at the White House. That decision was controversial as it made the president look as if he was in hiding or was not safe in his country’s capital.

Bush says that he ordered the plane to return to Washington but he was overruled by the secret service and political aides. Eventually it flew to an air force base in Louisiana and then to a military base in Nebraska.

But then came a decision Bush had never imagined he would have to make. A fourth plane was headed toward Washington. The president ordered that it be shot down by American fighter aircraft.

“Hijacked planes were weapons of war. Despite the agonising costs, taking one out could save countless lives on the ground. I had just made my first decision as a wartime commander in chief,” Bush writes.

Then news came of the fourth plane having gone down in Pennsylvania. “Did we shoot it down, or did it crash?” Bush asked. “Nobody knew. I felt sick to my stomach. Had I ordered the death of those innocent Americans?”

Only later did Bush learn that the plane had crashed after the passengers charged the hijackers in the cockpit.

The president says that one of the hardest things was following what was actually going on in his country that day. Air Force One had no satellite television and so would have to pick up local television stations as it flew over.

“After a few minutes on any given station, the screen would dissolve into static. I caught enough of a glimpse of the coverage to understand the horror of what the American people were watching. Stranded people were jumping to their deaths from the top floors of the World Trade Centre towers,” he writes.

Bush returned to Washington with a clear sense that the enemy had to be confronted, but no certainty as to how to do it or even how to rally his own country.

“There is no textbook on how to steady a nation rattled by a faceless enemy,” the former president writes.

“I relied on instincts and background. My west Texas optimism helped me project confidence.

“Occasionally I spoke a little too bluntly, such as when I said I wanted Bin Laden ‘dead or alive’,” he added.

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