WASHINGTON D.C., May 16, (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The White House admitted late Wednesday, May 15, to having had information and general warnings about the possibility of U.S. planes being hijacked before the attacks on September 11.

The disclosure marks the first time White House officials acknowledged they knew that terrorist organizations had targeted U.S. airlines weeks before the deadly strikes that reportedly left about 3,000 people dead.

Top White House spokesman Ari Fleisher stated Wednesday that , "There was . . . an awareness by the government, including the president, of Osama bin Laden and the threat he posed in the United States and around the world," Fleischer said.

"That included long-standing speculation about hijacking in the traditional sense, but not involving suicide bombers using airplanes as missiles."

A lower-level White House official also reiterated Fleisher’s statements, saying: “There was a general awareness of Osama bin Laden, as well as long-standing speculation about hijackings in the traditional sense," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

She said that prior to September 11, the president and his aides had been receiving information from intelligence agencies about possible attacks on U.S. planes and bin Laden's activities - and sharing it with domestic security organizations.

But none of the reports contained specific warnings about the plots targeting the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon building here, the spokeswoman pointed out.

"The information was about the hijackings and Osama bin Laden's threats around the world in the traditional sense, but not involving suicide bombings," Buchan stressed.

"There was no specific warning in terms of time, or place, or method of the attacks," she said.

A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spokesman refused to disclose if the information about these possible terror attacks had been relayed to Bush during his daily intelligence briefings.

"I'm not at liberty to speak on that issue," said the spokesman, who asked to remain unidentified.

But other officials pointed out the briefings had been most likely the source of the warnings.

The revelation came amid signs of growing frustration in Congress with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, which some lawmakers blame for either failing to discern red flags ahead of the catastrophe or act upon them.

Some of the September 11 hijackers, who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, studied flying in the United States.

A declassified portion of the Phoenix memorandum, made public earlier this month, contained a general proposal for FBI headquarters to discuss the pilot training "with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community."

An exasperated congressional representative was quoted by the Washington Post slamming the intelligence agencies for not acting upon the information in their custody.

Senator Richard C. Shelby (R- AK), the ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that the Phoenix agent's memo "was a very important warning and it was not heeded. It was not distributed. It was not acted upon."

"That in itself is a damning piece of evidence of the FBI losing an opportunity," Shelby said, the daily reported. “[The] events in Minnesota five weeks later, it's more than damning," he said. "Why didn't the FBI link them? They were either asleep, or inept, or both. What more is it going to take to wake up the FBI?"

Shelby leads a joint House and Senate investigation into the attacks of September 11 as well as the performance of the FBI, CIA and other agencies.

Several congressional representatives had also previously called for an investigation into whether or not the U.S. had foreknowledge of the attacks before September 11.

Last month, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) said in a press release that "news reports from Der Spiegal to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN, indicate that many warnings were received by the [US] Administration.”

McKinney, a long-time civil rights activist was slammed by influential political groups for her assertions that the U.S. government may have known about the September 11 attacks beforehand and did not take significant steps to prevent them. Several groups even went as far as calling her “un-patriotic” and even “anti-Semitic”, loosely claiming that any attacks on the U.S. were the same as attacks on Israel and that to question the U.S. would be like questioning Israel.

"We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?" McKinney asked.

The admission of the White House has shed new light on the McKinney inquiries as questions arise over what the Bush Administration could have done to help prevent the attacks.

McKinney also went on to question whether members of the U.S. government have benefited from the September 11 tragedy by supporting Bush’s ongoing and broad-based “war on terror”.

"We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York [and Washington D.C.] who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?"

“Persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war," McKinney asserted.

Despite reports, however, McKinney’s assertions were calls for an inquiry into the events as opposed to an outright condemnation of the Bush Administration.

"I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case," she stated in an interview last month.

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) also had previously called for an investigation into U.S. knowledge of the attacks before September 11.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller admitted last week, for instance, that the bureau largely ignored a July 2001 appeal from its field office in Phoenix, Arizona, to investigate “suspicious pilot training by Middle Eastern men”.

But new evidence that surfaced this week indicates the Phoenix memo contained more than vague suspicions.

The part of the document the FBI chose to keep secret contains a specific reference to bin Laden, as well as a suggestion that U.S. flight schools could be used to “prepare terrorist operations”, congressional officials said Wednesday.

An FBI agent in Minnesota, who questioned Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected 20th hijacker who says he did not take part in the attacks because he was under arrest, reportedly warned his superiors of a vaguely-defined terrorist plot targeting the World Trade Center.

The CIA also knew that two bin Laden associates allegedly discussed in 1995 the possibility of crashing a plane into agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the officials said.

"We failed to put the puzzle together before the horrific event," an exasperated Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN television late Wednesday.

His committee, as well as its counterpart in the House of Representatives, are to hold formal hearings soon in a bid to shed light on whether the U.S. intelligences community is to blame for failing to prevent the tragedy.