The September 11 commission, at a press conference releasing the final report of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, faulted on the US government for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and proposed a sweeping overhaul of the US intelligence apparatus.
"We did not grasp the magnitude of a threat that had been gathering over a considerable period of time. As we detail in our report, this was a failure of policy, management, capability and above all, a failure of imagination," commission chairman Thomas Kean said.
"None of the measures adopted by the United States government before September 11 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al-Qaeda plot," Kean said.
The United States has blamed the al Qaeda network for the terror attacks that killed some 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.
Kean criticized the government for failing to watch-list future hijackers before they arrived in the United States; failing to link the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, trying to use an airplane to a terrorist act, to the heightened indications of attack; failing to discover false statements on visa applications; failing to expand no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watch lists.
"These examples make up part of a broader national security picture where the government failed to protect the American people. The United States government was simply not active enough in combating the terrorist threat before the September 11," Kean said.
Kean stressed the failures took place over many years and administrations.
"There is no single individuals who is responsible for our failures. Yet individuals and institutions can not be absolved of responsibility. Any person in a senior position within our government during this time bears some element of responsibility for our government's actions," Kean said.
Kean said that the commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, found no relationship between Iraq and the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. "We found no relationship whatever between Iraq and the attack on September 11. That just does not exist," Kean said.
Neither did the commission find any Iranian role in the September 11 terror attacks. "There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran knew anything about the attack on September 11 or certainly assisted in it any way whatsoever," he said.
Lee Hamilton, the September 11 commission vice chairman, announced the commission's recommendations to the government.
"We should create a national counter-terrorism center to unify all counter-terrorism intelligence and operations across the foreign and domestic divide in one organization," Hamilton said.
"We recommend a national intelligence director. We need unity of effort in the intelligence community," Hamilton said.
Hamilton said the US Congress should also be reformed. "Oversight for homeland security is splintered among too many committees. We need much stronger committees performing oversight of intelligence, and we need a single committee in each chamber providing oversight of the Department of Homeland Security," he said.
Internationally, "We need ensure key countries, like Afghanistan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, are stable, capable and resolute in opposing terrorism. We need to sustain a coalition of nations that cooperate bilaterally and multilaterally with us in the counter-terrorism mission," Hamilton said.
"We need a better dialogue between the West and the Islamic World," Hamilton said.
The commission, which interviewed thousands of witnesses and examined mountains of documents, released the much-awaited 567-page final report on Thursday.
Earlier Thursday, US President George W. Bush met Kean and Hamilton at the White House and praised the September 11 commission for its hard work as well as "very constructive recommendations."
"It has been my honor to welcome Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton to the Oval Office. We just had a good discussion about the September 11 commission report," Bush told reporters at the White House.
"I want to thank these two gentlemen for serving their country so well and so admirably. They have done a really good job of learning about our country, learning about what went wrong prior to September 11th, and making very solid, sound recommendations about how to move forward. I assured them that where government needs to act, we will," Bush said.
Bush promised to study the recommendations and work with responsible parties within his administration "to move forward on these recommendations."
Rejecting the blame of the September 11 commission report, Bush said on Wednesday that he did not have enough warning to prevent the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.
"Had we had any inkling whatsoever that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America. Any president would," Bush said.
(Xhina News Agency July 23, 2004)
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