December 13, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 8, 1423

WASHINGTON, Dec 12: US lawmakers have urged the government to appoint a new, cabinet-level intelligence czar to supervise America’s huge intelligence gathering machinery.

In a long-awaited report on intelligence lapses before the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the lawmakers also criticized the bosses of CIA, FBI and other agencies, saying that they could have thwarted the attacks had they been more careful.

The final report by a joint House and Senate intelligence committee, released on Wednesday, makes 19 recommendations in all, many involving structural changes to intelligence agencies.

It also calls for an investigation of possible links between foreign governments and terrorists and a study of whether the United States should create a domestic spy agency similar to Britain’s MI5, which has the power to collect intelligence inside Britain while leaving law enforcement to police.

The report did not firmly conclude that the Sept 11 attacks could have been prevented. But it said that if key clues had been linked, would-be hijackers could have been arrested or denied entry to the United States and the plot might have been unravelled, or at least the nation might have been on a heightened state of alert.

“No one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of information,” it said.

Senator Bob Graham, Democrat, Florida, who summarized the findings along with other senior members of the committee, cited intelligence indicating that Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was contemplating attacks against the American homeland, a memo by an FBI agent suggesting an investigation of Arabs receiving training as pilots in the United States and reports that leaders of the terror network had considered using commercial jetliners as “weapons of mass destruction”.

Investigators found, however, that the intelligence agencies did not overlook “information that would have provided detailed warnings of the attacks”, Graham said.