France aware of 9/11-type threat months earlier

FRANCE’S foreign intelligence service learned as early as January 2001 that al-Qaida was preparing a hijacking plot likely to involve a US airplane, former intelligence officials said yesterday, confirming a report that also said the CIA received the warning.

Le Monde newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents on Osama bin Laden’s terror network that were drawn up by the French spy service, the DGSE, between July 2000 and October 2001. The documents included a January 5, 2001, intelligence report warning that al-Qaida was at work on a hijacking plot.

Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, the former chief of staff for the agency’s director at the time, said he remembered the note and that it mentioned only the vague outlines of a hijacking plot — nothing that foreshadowed the scale of the September 11 attacks.