WASHINGTON, July 22 (AFP) - A national panel investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks on Thursday cast blame on both the Clinton and Bush administrations for a "failure of imagination" to antcipate the attack.
In its final report, the 10-member bipartisan panel said that "terrorism was not the overriding national security concern for the US government under either the Clinton or pre-9/11 Bush administration."
The panel named by Bush capped a nearly two-year inquiry with a scathing criticism of the government`s intelligence agencies and air defenses and said neither the Democratic nor Republican White Houses took bold enough action.
"Officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations regarded a full US invasion of Afghanistan (to root out Osama bin Laden`s al-Qaeda) as practically inconceivable before 9/11."
The commissioners also took the US congress to task, saying it failed to provide adequate guidance to the executive on terrorism and did not perform sufficient oversight to identify and redress problems in homeland security.
"The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise," the panel said in a 26-page executive summary accompanying the 567-page report. It said Islamic fundamentalists had made clear their intention of killing Americans.
While acknowledging it was impossible to say whether the attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead were preventable, the panel said the 19 hijackers were a fragile group of sometimes unstable people.
"The enemy made mistakes. The US government was not able to capitalize on them," the report said.
The commission`s conclusions appeared crafted to avoid fueling a major political polemic that was already raging ahead of November`s presidential election pitting George W. Bush against Democrat John Kerry.
With security looming as a major issue, the Democrats have slammed Bush for massive intelligence failures before the September 11 onslaught and laxity in beefing up homeland security since.
Bush insisted again Wednesday there was no way he could have foiled the strikes. "Had we had any inkling whatsoever that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America," he said.