US intelligence failings attacked

The FBI insists it could not have prevented the attacks

The United States Congress has released a report highlighting failings by the US intelligence services in the run-up to the 11 September 2001 attacks.

The report says the attacks could have been prevented if the right combination of "skill, co-operation, creativity and good luck had been brought to bear".

However, the 900-page report concludes that there was no one piece of intelligence that "would have identified the place, date or time of the attacks".

Saudi Arabia also comes under criticism, with the chair of the investigation, Senator Bob Graham, accusing Riyadh of providing some assistance to the hijackers and failing to cooperate with the US intelligence agencies.

The Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan said accusations that his government was involved in 11 September were malicious and blatantly false.

Referring to sections of the report which were classified and remain unpublished, he said Saudi Arabia had nothing to hide, but couldn't respond to blank pages.

Missed warnings

The report criticises the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the breakdown in their communication.

Among the 16 recommendations, the document urges that a new system of accountability be put into place across the whole intelligence community in the US.

Some of the failings listed in the report are well known, such as the warning from an FBI agent about Middle Eastern men attending flight training schools that was ignored by FBI headquarters, says the BBC's Rob Watson in Washington.

No one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of information Congressional report

But some of the information is new.

The report says that in May 2001 a key hijacker, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been identified in an intelligence report as seeking recruits to travel to the United States for terrorist activities.

Those individuals would be expected to make contact with "colleagues" already there, it said.

The report also says two of the hijackers had had "numerous contacts" with an FBI informant in San Diego who was not aware that they were al-Qaeda militants.

The two, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, had been identified as members of Osama bin Laden's network after attending an al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, the report says.

However this information was not passed on to the FBI, according to the congressmen.

Funding

The document says a student who provided al-Mihdhar and Alhazmi with financial help, Omar al-Bayoumi, "had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia".

The Riyadh government has consistently denied any links with the hijackers.

Hijacker Nawaq Alhamzi was known to the CIA

The report includes criticism of Saudi co-operation in fighting Muslim militants.

There were calls by Senator Graham and others to declassify the sections of the report dealing with alleged Saudi links.

"President Bush needs to declassify parts of the congressional report that detail Saudi Government involvement in the events leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks," Representative Eliot Engel said.

However House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, defended the classification, saying it was "intended to protect sources and methods" rather than "reputations and countries".

"No one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of information," the report said.

Although the report was completed in December, it has taken until now for it to be declassified.

The congressional report follows hearings by the joint committee last year.

A separate independent commission is also looking into the 11 September attacks and is expected to make its conclusions next May.