Bush chides CIA, FBI for lapses

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Tuesday the CIA and FBI failed to communicate adequately before Sept. 11. Congress began extraordinary closed-door hearings into intelligence lapses with bipartisan promises that the inquiry will search for facts, not scapegoats.

"We’re up and running with momentum," said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who will run the first week of the joint Senate-House intelligence committee hearings.

"We will be a fact-driven inquiry," Goss said as he stood next to Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who will run the hearing on alternate weeks, under the rules the joint committee adopted during its first meeting Tuesday. "We will not be driven by outside pressures."

Hours before the committee met for the first time behind closed doors, Bush, in his most explicit criticism yet of FBI and CIA actions before the attacks, said: "I think it’s clear that they weren’t" communicating properly.

But, speaking at the National Security Agency, Bush also said there is no evidence that U.S. officials could have averted the attacks, even if the agencies had worked together better.

The House-Senate intelligence committee will examine just that point, and others, as it seeks to uncover what clues might have pointed to the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and how to prevent lapses in the future.

Graham said the committee, starting today, would have staff briefings on specific issues, then call witnesses in upcoming closed hearings. Open hearings will begin June 25.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear Thursday from Minnesota FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who says FBI headquarters ignored her office’s pleas in the weeks before Sept. 11 to aggressively investigate in August.

Moussaoui, now charged as an accomplice in the hijacking plot, had come under suspicion by the FBI and was arrested on an immigration charge.