DVTimes

A video has emerged showing security checks on one group of 11 September hijackers, prior to boarding the plane they crashed into the Pentagon.
Four men undergo additional checks after setting off metal detectors at Washington's Dulles airport.

On Thursday the commission probing the attacks on New York and Washington is due to make its final report.

The commission is expected to recommend extensive reforms to the United States intelligence services.

It will also list what are described as missed opportunities to detect the plot in the years leading up to the attacks.

Almost 3,000 people died when hijacked aircraft crashed into New York's World Trade Center and Washington's Pentagon.

BBC News Online world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds says the measures proposed in the report would amount to the most significant change since the CIA itself was founded after World War II.

Nothing found

The surveillance video shot at Dulles airport on the morning 11 September shows four of the five hijackers being subjected to additional searches before being allowed onto American Airlines flight 77.

They were then screened with a handheld device, and one man had his bag checked with an explosive trace detector.

A fifth man did not set off any alarms.

Investigators believe that the hijackers were carrying utility knives, which at that time were legal in carry-on baggage.

The video was obtained by the Associated Press from lawyers Motley Rice, who are representing some survivors' families in their efforts to sue airlines over the 11 September attacks.

"Even after setting off these alarms, the airlines and security screeners failed to examine the hijackings' baggage... or discover the weapons they would use in their attack," said lawyer Ron Motley.

The crash killed all 64 people on board, and 125 employees at the Pentagon.

Intelligence czar

Congress leaders viewed the final report, by the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, on Tuesday. White House aides were due to be shown it on Wednesday.

The report will be presented at 1130EDT in Washington (1530 GMT).

It is almost 600 pages long, and follows testimony from more than 1,000 witnesses and examination of as many classified documents.

It will propose a radical shake-up of US intelligence, including the appointment of a new intelligence czar to over oversee 15 spy agencies.

According to the Washington Post newspaper, it will also list 10 instances where the government could have unravelled the plot.

Six of these came during the current administration of President George W Bush, the other four under his predecessor Bill Clinton.

The commission is also expected to lay out new claims about possible links between al-Qaeda and Iran.

President Bush is promising to listen to the recommendations, although last month he disputed findings by the commission that there was no link between al-Qaeda and former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Correspondents say that in the middle of an election campaign the incumbent president has the most to lose from the report.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3915471.stm

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