The US commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will release its final report in Washington D.C., on Thursday, the commission announced Monday.

Commission chairman Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the vice chairman, will present the report at a live televised event, the statement said.

For the past 20 months, the commission has worked to fulfill its mandate, preparing for the Congress, the president, and the American people an authoritative account of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and recommendations to help avert future attacks, Kean said in the statement.

"The terrorist threat to the United States has not disappeared since Sept. 11, and future attacks are expected," the statement quoted Hamilton as saying.

Included in the report will be many of the conclusions that were made in the commission's 17 staff reports released during its public hearings last year and this year, reports here said.

The bulk of the final report, expected to run over 500 pages, will catalog the chain of intelligence and law enforcement failures that allowed 19 terrorists to enter the United States undetected and carry out attacks that killed about 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

The panel is expected to recommend the creation of a cabinet-level post to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies, the most important of the recommendations in the long-awaited report.

The 10-member bipartisan commission would make other important recommendations, including a proposal for a major reorganization of the way Congress oversees intelligence agencies and for a restructuring of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is now responsible for domestic intelligence, the reports said.

The commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was set up in late 2002 to examine security-related issues before the attacks and response afterward and to make recommendations on guarding against future attacks.

(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2004)