U.S. Congress Begins Hearings on 911 Attacks

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, June 05, 2002

U.S. Congress Begins Hearings on 911 Attacks

The U.S. Congress on Tuesday launched a series of closed door hearings on the intelligence failure to thwart the September 11 attacks.

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The U.S. Congress on Tuesday launched a series of closed door hearings on the intelligence failure to thwart the September 11 attacks.

The lawmakers are trying to find out what went wrong before theSeptember 11 attacks and what to be done to get the Federal Bureauof Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to prevent the nation from further terrorist attacks.

The private hearings are led by the intelligence committees of the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives and are expected to last months.

The hearings are expected to open to the public on June 24 whenthe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet are scheduled to appear, congressional sources said.

The FBI and CIA have been criticized for failing to share information that could have warned of the attacks.

Before the hearings started, U.S. President George W. Bush expressed his concern that congressional investigations might takegovernment experts away from their central job of preventing another attack.

"What I am concerned about is tying up valuable assets and timeand possibly jeopardizing sources of intelligence," Bush said.

Bush said that he saw no evidence suggesting the country had the information that would have prevented the September 11 terrorist attacks from happening.

"I have seen no evidence to date that said this country could have prevented the attack," Bush said.

He admitted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were not communicating properly before the September 11 attacks, but he said the two agencies are now in closer contact.

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