This is some pretty amazing stuff:

A U.S. congressional hearing was told on Wednesday that three years before the Sept. 11 attacks intelligence agencies had information about a group that planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center.

The information obtained in August 1998 about the group of "unidentified Arabs" was passed to the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration, but "the FAA found the plot highly unlikely given the state of that foreign country's aviation program," said Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint Sept. 11 inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees.