WASHINGTON, June 5: Behind closed doors and in a soundproof room, US lawmakers began a joint probe on Tuesday into the failure of US intelligence to thwart the Sept. 11 attacks, as President George W. Bush warned Congress not to hinder his “war on terrorism”.

After a moment of silence for the victims, members of the intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives adopted an “initial scope of inquiry.”

“We have now ... laid the foundation and beginning tomorrow we will have staff briefings on the specific areas that we will be having detailed, witness-driven hearings on,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, announced following a three-hour opening session.

The “initial scope of inquiry” effectively states Congress wants answers to key questions: What did the FBI, CIA and other agencies know and when did they know it? What did they do about it? What have they learned since Sept. 11? What can be done to improve intelligence and better guard against another attack?

“We need to be aggressive and rigorous in these inquiries, asking the right questions — like who knew what and if they didn’t know it why and what did they do with the information they had,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat.

Sen. Richard Shelby, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a public television interview: “We’re going to get to the bottom of the problems in our intelligences agencies whatever it costs.”

The FBI and CIA have come under fire after a string of disclosures that they failed to share information that could have warned of the attacks, and the Bush administration has been criticized for not being open enough about what it knew.

On Tuesday Bush said he was worried congressional probes might take government experts away from their job of preventing another attack.

“I want the Congress to investigate, but I want a committee to investigate, not multiple committees ... because I don’t want to tie up our team,” Bush said.

The White House opposes mostly Democratic calls for a separate investigation by an independent commission, contending such a probe could become political and be less able to handle classified information.

But Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, stuck to his position that an outside panel of experts should take a look. “What is happening currently with the CIA and the FBI is all the more reason we should get on with the commission,” declared Daschle.—Reuters