9/11: US failed to act on terror threat

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.

In issuing the panel's 567-page final report, commission chairman Tom Kean said none of the government's efforts to thwart a known threat from al-Qaida had "disturbed or even delayed" Osama bin Laden's plot.

"(They) penetrated the defences of the most powerful nation in the world," Mr Kean said. "They inflicted unbearable trauma on our people and, at the same time, they turned international order upside down."