CIA head testifies

The head of the CIA never informed a vacationing President George W. Bush in August 2001 that a suspected Islamic extremist had been detected taking flight lessons, the panel investigating the September 11 airliner attacks on New York and Washington heard yesterday.

CIA director George Tenet also told the commission probing the incidents, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed, that he did not tell other senior officials of the matter, saying it was "not appropriate."

Commissioner Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, asked Mr Tenet if he had ever mentioned to Mr Bush the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui in mid-August 2001 after he had been detected behaving suspiciously in a Minnesota flight school.

Tenet said he had not spoken to the president at all that month, when Mr Bush was staying at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"He's in Texas and I'm either here or on leave for some of that time," he said. "In this time period, I'm not talking to him, no."

After Moussaoui's arrest, Mr Tenet and other top CIA officials received a briefing headed, "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."

But the CIA director did not bring it up at a meeting of top administration officials to discuss Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organisation on September 4, a week before the attacks.

"It wasn't discussed at the principals' meeting since we were having a separate agenda," Mr Tenet said. "All I can tell you is just it wasn't the appropriate place. I just can't take you any farther than that."

Moussaoui, who was originally detained for immigration violations, was later charged with conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks, and faces a possible death penalty if convicted. His trial has been put on hold until an appeals court rules if the government can still pursue a death sentence without letting Moussaoui question three al Qaeda captives who might help clear him.

A commission staff report issued at the start of another day of hearings on the attacks said that United States had developed defenses against surprise military strikes after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 but never applied them to potential terrorist threats.

"With the important exception of attacks with chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, the methods developed for decades to warn of surprise attacks were not applied to the problem of warning against terrorist attacks," the report said.

Mr Tenet came under tough questioning, with Republican commissioner John Lehman calling the staff report a "damning evaluation of a system that is broken."