Kenya Embassy Warning Confirmed-- U.S. intelligence officials had received a detailed warning about the Nairobi embassy attack nine months before it occurred, the New York Times reported October 23, citing unidentified U.S and Kenyan officials. In November 1997, Mustafa Mahmoud Said Ahmed, an Egyptian who stood accused of participating in the Dar es Salaam bombing, went to the Nairobi embassy and warned officials of a planned attack on the building. According to U.S. officials, Ahmed reportedly said that a group of Islamic radicals would detonate a truck filled with explosives inside the building's underground parking garage--which is what happened in the August bombing.
The Times article reported that in a separate interrogation by Kenyan intelligence officials, Ahmed had said that he had taken surveillance photographs of the embassy in preparation for the attack.
The U.S. State Department had officially denied since the bombings that it had received specific threats regarding the attacks. However, an unidentified official late October 22 said that the State Department had received from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) two reports about Ahmed, according to the Times article. The official said that the reports resulted in several weeks of heightened security at the embassy, but because there was no attack, the extra security precautions were removed.