White House yields to 9/11 panel

The panel has until May to report on its findings

A commission investigating the 11 September attacks says the White House has agreed to let it see some top-secret presidential documents.

The bipartisan congressional commission is trying to establish when the authorities were alerted to possible al-Qaeda attacks on the US.

It also wants to know exactly when an alert was issued that four passenger planes had been hijacked.

Military jets were scrambled, but they came too late to stop the attacks.

The 10-member panel, headed by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, has until May to report on its investigation into lapses in national security relating to the attacks.

About 3,000 people were killed when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania.

Secret documents

The congressional commission now says it has reached a deal allowing it to look at classified information President George W Bush had wanted withheld.

"We believe this agreement will prove satisfactory and enable us to get our job done," the commission said in a statement.

The commission had threatened to subpoena the documents, which cover daily briefings to the White House by the Central Intelligence Agency at around the time of the attacks two years ago.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon agreed to hand over records subpoenaed by the commission.

In October the panel subpoenaed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), accusing the organisation of slowing down its inquiry.

The FAA has had to hand over information relating to air-traffic-control tracking of the hijacked aircraft.