The CIA just declassified dozens of presidential daily briefs proving the intelligence community knew Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack planes and attack American cities for years before 9/11 — and did nothing to stop it, then leveraged that same failure to grab more power over ordinary Americans.

This isn't a story about what we didn't know. It's a story about what they knew and couldn't be bothered to act on — before using the consequences of their inaction to build the surveillance state that now watches every move you make.

The documents, released Friday on the 25th anniversary of the attacks, read like a countdown to a disaster two presidents and an entire intelligence apparatus watched approaching in slow motion. As far back as 1998, briefers told President Clinton that bin Laden's "preferred option is to strike the US on its own soil in Washington" and that al-Qaeda "may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city," according to the declassified files. That same year, a December briefing warned that bin Laden was "preparing to hijack US aircraft" and that operatives had already conducted a "trial run at an unidentified New York airport," the New York Post reported.

By August 6, 2001 — five weeks before the attacks — President Bush received a briefing titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." It noted that al-Qaeda members "have resided in or traveled to the US for years" and that the FBI was conducting "approximately 70 full field investigations" related to bin Laden. Fourteen days before the attacks, Bush was told al-Qaeda "stresses careful planning, tight security practices" and that "cells prepare for an attack well beforehand," Breitbart reported.

None of this stopped the attacks. Nearly 3,000 Americans died.

And here is where the story turns from tragedy to scandal. After 9/11, did Congress dismantle the agencies that failed? Did anyone get fired? No. Washington did what Washington always does: it rewarded failure. The Patriot Act passed. The NSA began bulk-collecting Americans' phone records. The surveillance state exploded in scope and budget. The same intelligence community that had the information and couldn't connect the dots was handed more dots — and more authority to collect them from your email, your phone, your bank account.

CNN noted that a "siloed intelligence apparatus" kept different agencies from putting the pieces together. The 9/11 Commission found the same. Fair enough — but the solution wasn't to break the silos. It was to build bigger silos with more windows into your life.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the release "an act of exceptional transparency," per The Guardian. It's a remarkable claim from an agency that sat on these documents for 25 years. Transparency after a quarter-century isn't courage — it's damage control.

The documents confirm what the 9/11 Commission already established: both the Clinton and Bush administrations received years of warnings and failed to act decisively. This is bipartisan failure at its most deadly. The establishment press frames this as a "systemic" problem — vague language that ensures no one person or institution bears the blame. But the facts are specific. Two presidents were told. The CIA knew. The FBI had 70 open investigations. And still, nothing stopped those planes.

The question isn't what the intelligence community knew before 9/11. We know what they knew. The question is why anyone would trust them with more power after proving they couldn't use the power they already had.