http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/06/wsept06.xmlPresident George W Bush was thrown on the defensive yesterday by signs that a September 11 inquiry will find that the attacks were "probably preventable".
The head of the September 11 commission, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, and his Democratic deputy, Lee Hamilton, signalled that their final report this summer would conclude that the attacks could have been prevented, if not for a series of intelligence and law enforcement blunders.
President George W Bush
They also appeared to endorse the accusation by a former White House counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, that the fledgling Bush administration failed to understand the importance of al-Qa'eda, in part because of a partisan disdain for Clinton-era national security priorities.
Asked on NBC television if the incoming Bush team was sceptical about some of the threat assessments about al-Qa'eda in the months before the attacks, Mr Kean replied: "I think that's probably fair, and probably right." But Mr Bush said yesterday: "If we'd known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings, we'd have done everything in our power to stop it."