Blair faces call for 9/11 intelligence probe

British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced calls for a fresh inquiry into intelligence failings today amid US claims they contributed to September 11.

Blair has already been forced to set up the Butler Inquiry into why information on Iraqi weapons was wrong.

Now UK security services are under pressure over a US commission report into the 2001 al-Qaida plane hijacking attacks.

They were too slow in providing information on a terror suspect now being tried for involvement in the 9/11 plot, the commission found.

French Moroccan Zacarias Moussaoui, arrested as he was learning to fly a jumbo jet on a simulator, had lived in London.

An FBI legal attaché “promptly prepared a written request of the British government for information concerning Moussaoui and hand deliver the request on August 21”, the report said.

“The case, though handled expeditiously at the American end, was not handled by the British as a priority amid a large number of other terrorist-related inquiries.”

Had the information been available in late August 2001 the case “would almost certainly have received intense and much higher-level attention”, added the report, published last night.

Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: “If it is demonstrated that there were serious lapses on the part of British intelligence agencies before 9/11 this would clearly be a matter of the gravest concern.

“It would almost certainly justify a further inquiry in order to establish the truth or otherwise of such allegations.”