THE US was slow to take seriously the threat posed by homegrown radicals and the government has failed to put systems in place to deal with the growing phenomenon, according to a report compiled by the former heads of the 9/11 commission.

The US' Homeland Security Department has made the nation only marginally safer than before the 2001 terror attacks that created it, the agency’s former internal watchdog claims in a new book.

The United States intelligence community must be radically overhauled in the face of the ongoing terrorist threat, the September 11 Commission said.

THE US Government failed to appreciate the threat posed by al-Qaida who exploited those lapses to carry out the deadliest assault ever on American soil, the chairman of the 9/11 commission said yesterday.

US leaders and intelligence chiefs failed for many years to grasp the gravity of the threat posed by extremists and suffered from “failure of imagination,” the commission investigating the September 11 attacks said in its final report released today.