911: Terror threat row

Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), July 23, 2004

America's leaders failed to grasp the gravity of terrorist threats before the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, taking actions so feeble they never even slowed the al Qaeda plotters, a national commission said in a blistering report yesterday.

The panel warned "we are not safe" and called for major intelligence changes. Its work is sure to reverberate across the presidential campaign.

In an investigation of the attack, the commission noted many government mistakes but did not cast blame on any official and stopped short of saying the hijackings could have been prevented.