CIA and FBI failed to act on terror data

PRIOR to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the CIA failed to act on intelligence it had about hijackers, the FBI was unable to track al-Qaida in the United States, and key National Security Agency communications intercepts never were circulated, an American congressional investigation has concluded.

But even had these and many other failures not occurred, no evidence surfaced in the probe by the House and Senate intelligence committees to show that the government could have prevented the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

A 900-page declassified version of the report being released yesterday was expected to provide fresh details of the September 11 plot and government failures but no "smoking guns."