CIA blames FBI over 11 September failures

Finger-pointing over the massive 11 September intelligence failure increased yesterday after the CIA said it had passed crucial information to the FBI.

The Senate and House intelligence committees began secret joint hearings yesterday on whether the terrorist attacks could have been prevented, amid evidence of the entrenched feud between two pillars of the US security establishment.

CIA officers have told American newspapers that they passed on information to the FBI about two future hijackers identified at an al-Qa'ida "summit" in Malaysia in January 2001.

Tomorrow the dispute will go public when Coleen Rowley, the "whistleblower" at the FBI field office in Minnesota, tells the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Bureau's head office in Washington refused pleas for an aggressive investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker.