Declassified CIA files: bin Laden wanted to target India in 1998
Newly released CIA files show that Osama bin Laden intended to carry out attacks in India as early as August 1998. They do not show that he had chosen Delhi, Mumbai, Srinagar, or any other Indian city.
That distinction is the core of the record. An August 28, 1998, President’s Daily Brief titled “Bin Ladin Terrorist Network Still a Threat” listed India among the countries where the al-Qaeda leader intended to strike. The same sentence named Pakistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Uganda and possibly Nigeria.
The brief was among 71 presidential intelligence products, covering more than 100 pages, released by the CIA on September 11, 2026, to mark 25 years since the attacks on New York and Washington. The collection was prepared for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. CIA Director John Ratcliffe called it the agency’s largest release of presidential daily briefs.
The mention of India came after the August 7, 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the August 20 US cruise-missile strikes on camps in Afghanistan. Analysts informed the White House that bin Laden and other leaders had survived, their communications network was still working, training had restarted at some camps, and other camps were being relocated.
They reported that he could rely on people and allied groups in at least 60 countries. India is listed as a country, not as a group of cities. The visible text does not mention New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, or Srinagar. It also does not mention Parliament House, the Red Fort, the Bombay Stock Exchange, any consulate, airport, or hotel.
The file does mention a South Asian network connected to the unnamed Indian target. A February 24, 1998 assessment said leaders of the Pakistan-based Harakat ul-Ansar had signed bin Laden’s fatwa calling for attacks on US interests and civilians worldwide. Harakat ul-Ansar, later called Harakat ul-Mujahedin (HUM), was already active in Jammu and Kashmir.
A September 1998 brief stated that HUM was working with bin Laden to attack US, British, and French interests. The location of the planned attack is blacked out. It does not name Srinagar, Jammu, or any city in the Kashmir Valley. These passages describe the environment Indian agencies had warned about: Afghan camps used by Pakistan-based groups crossing the Line of Control, shared members, and common infrastructure after the anti-Soviet war.
These details still do not turn the August 28 list into a plan against any specific Indian city. Later events in Indian cities are not covered by this brief.
The December 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which started in Kathmandu and ended in Kandahar, involved HUM. The December 2001 attack on Parliament House in New Delhi happened three years after the CIA note. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was behind the November 2008 attack on Mumbai.
Other documents in the 2026 release focus on the United States: a September 1998 warning that al-Qaeda “may fly an explosive-packed aeroplane into a US city,” a December 1998 note about possible hijackings, and the August 6, 2001 paper “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” Nineteen hijackers attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. For India, the newly released record is both bigger and smaller than some headlines claim.
It is bigger because a brief at the time told the US president that India was on bin Laden’s target list in 1998, along with Pakistan and before 9/11.
The 1998 mention of India is part of this record. American intelligence believed bin Laden planned to attack in India, but did not tell the White House which city he meant to attack.
