United States Congressional Serial Set Serial No 14750 Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activity Before And After Terrorists Attacks Of September 11 2001 With Errata

This is the declassified version of the Final Report of the Joint Inquiry that was approved and filed with the House of Representatives and the Senate on Dec. 20, 2002. With the exception of portions that were released to the public previously (e.g., the additional views of Members, the GAO Anthrax Report, etc.), this version has been declassified by the Intelligence Community prior to its public release. The report of the Joint Inquiry includes findings and conclusions, accompanying narrative, and recommendations. It also includes additional views, of both House and Senate members of their respective committees, which are collected in an Appendix.

In February 2002, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence agreed to conduct a Joint Inquiry into the activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community in connection with the terrorist attacks perpetrated against the United States on September 11, 2001. This report (available as both S. Rept. 107-351 and H. Rept. 107-792) consists of 832 pages (as a single file in PDF Format only) that presents the joint inquiry's findings and conclusions, an accompanying narrative, and a series of recommendations.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led many to inquire whether there had been a failure by United States intelligence agencies to collect all available information about the plots that led to the attacks, to analyze it properly, and disseminate it in time to protect the American public. Congressional intelligence committees responded by launching an unprecedented Joint Inquiry to investigate the Intelligence Community's record in regard to the 9/11 attacks and make recommendations for further legislative action. The Joint Inquiry began its investigation in February 2002 and held public hearings in September and October. Findings, conclusions, and recommendations were made public in December 2002; release of the final report is anticipated in 2003. In public hearings, the Joint Inquiry's Staff Director traced salient aspects of the Inquiry's work and emphasized that, whereas the Intelligence Community provided ample warning of an impending attack in mid-2001 against the U.S. by the Islamic terrorist group headed by Osama Bin Laden, the Community did not learn in advance the plans for the aircraft hijackings that occurred on September 11. The Joint Inquiry focused on several underlying problems. For a number of Constitutional, statutory, and organization reasons, information collected by intelligence agencies has historically not been routinely used for law enforcement purposes. Similarly, information collected in preparation for trials has not been routinely forwarded to intelligence agencies. In an era in which terrorists work abroad to launch attacks in the U.S., some have argued that the "walls" between intelligence and law enforcement have complicated the ability of any agency to put together a complete picture of evolving plots. Explaining the complexity of this situation was a major contribution of the Inquiry, although the issue of breaching these "walls" remains complicated and controversial. In addition, the Inquiry examined the role of the FBI. There were criticisms of the Bureau's ability to: process and store information; provide communications links between field offices and headquarters; process applications for surveillance; and coordinate with intelligence agencies. More fundamentally, the intelligence committees examined priorities that, prior to September 11, 2001, did not emphasize counterterrorism to the extent that has subsequently been considered necessary. The Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2003 (P.L. 107-306) establishes an independent commission to assess the role of agencies throughout the government with regard to the 9/11 attacks. This independent commission, to be headed by former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean, will build upon the investigatory record of the Joint Inquiry, but might reach further to assess organizational issues and the proper relationship of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This report will be updated as circumstances dictate.

In this explosive, controversial, and profoundly alarming insider’s report, Senator Bob Graham reveals faults in America’s national security network severe enough to raise fundamental questions about the competence and honesty of public officials in the CIA, the FBI, and the White House. For ten years, Senator Graham served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he had access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Graham co-chaired a historic joint House-Senate inquiry into the intelligence community’s failures. From that investigation and his own personal fact-finding, Graham discovered disturbing evidence of terrorist activity and a web of complicity: • At one point, a terrorist support network conducted some of its operations through Saudi Arabia’s U.S. embassy–and a funding chain for terrorism led to the Saudi royal family. • In February 2002, only four months after combat began in Afghanistan, the Bush administration ordered General Tommy Franks to move vital military resources out of Afghanistan for an operation against Iraq–despite Franks’s privately stated belief that there was a job to finish in Afghanistan, and that the war on terrorism should focus next on terrorist targets in Somalia and Yemen. • Throughout 2002, President Bush directed the FBI to limit its investigations of Saudi Arabia, which supported some and possibly all of the September 11 hijackers. • The White House was so uncooperative with the bipartisan inquiry that its behavior bore all the hallmarks of a cover-up. • The FBI had an informant who was extremely close to two of the September 11 hijackers, and actually housed one of them, yet the existence of this informant and the scope of his contacts with the hijackers were covered up. • There were twelve instances when the September 11 plot could have been discovered and potentially foiled. • Days after 9/11, U.S. authorities allowed some Saudis to fly, despite a complete civil aviation ban, after which the government expedited the departure of more than one hundred Saudis from the United States. • Foreign leaders throughout the Middle East warned President Bush of exactly what would happen in a postwar Iraq, and those warnings went either ignored or unheeded. As a result of his Senate work, Graham has become convinced that the attacks of September 11 could have been avoided, and that the Bush administration’s war on terrorism has failed to address the immediate danger posed by al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. His book is a disturbing reminder that at the highest levels of national security, now more than ever, intelligence matters.

In February 2002, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence agreed to conduct a Joint Inquiry into the activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community in connection with the terrorist attacks perpetrated against our nation on September 11, 2001. This report consists of 832 pages that presents the joint inquiry's findings and conclusions, plus an accompanying narrative, and a series of recommendations. This is the declassified version of the Final Report of the Joint Inquiry that was held by the U. S. Congress into the attacks of September 11, 2001. For reasons of printing production it has been produced in two volumes but is otherwise identical to the one volume report initially released by the Congress to the media. The entire narrative report is included in the first volume, and the appendices and supplementary information are included in the second volume.