WASHINGTON, Sept 17: US intelligence agencies picked up threats of attacks inside the United States and of using airplanes as weapons during the spring and summer before last year’s Sept11 attacks, but were more focused on the possibility of an assault overseas, a congressional source said on Tuesday.

But there was no information that specified date, time, place or method that would have pointed to the attacks on New York and Washington, the source familiar with a congressional inquiry into intelligence failures told reporters.

“What you’re going to find is that there was reporting on domestic attacks in the US even though a lot of people were much more focused on overseas,” the source said.

“You’re going to see specific reporting about aircraft as weapons and what the intelligence community had on aircraft as weapons prior to 9/11,” the source said referring to information that will be revealed on Wednesday at the first open hearing of the joint congressional inquiry.

US officials had previously said that intelligence agencies had picked up an increased level of “chatter,” or reports of threats, the summer before the attacks, but that it had pointed to plans for a strike against US interests overseas.

It had previously been reported that US President George W. Bush received an intelligence report last summer that said followers of Osama bin Laden might hijack planes. But officials have said the view at the time was of traditional hijackings and not using airplanes as weapons in suicide attacks.

“It is true that there was, and some people say, an unprecedented amount of reporting that ... peaked probably in June and then started to drop off,” the source who spoke on condition of anonymity said.

Eleanor Hill, who heads the 9/11 investigation for the inquiry by the US Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees, on Wednesday will detail the threat reports that US spy agencies had before the attacks.

The information has been declassified “so that the American public can get some sort of official version of what was actually being received and heard in our intelligence community before 9/11,” the congressional source said.

But so far, no smoking gun.

“You don’t see reporting that says on September 11th there is going to be a plane crash into the World Trade Center,” the source said.—Reuters