French knew of al-Qaida plot

April 16, 2007
French knew of al-Qaida plot

PARIS - A French intelligence service learned as early as January 2001 that al-Qaida was working on a plot to hijack U.S. airliners, and it passed the information on to the
CIA, a news report said Monday.

France's 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 foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, between July 2000 and October 2001.