Is the FBI to blame for failing to uncover the 9-11 plot? And was one of the hijackers' associates a Saudi agent? The long-delayed 900-page report on the 2001 attacks was finally released on Thursday--and its findings are sure to prompt a new round of finger-pointing about American intel.

In addition to slamming the FBI, the study criticizes the Pentagon for resisting military strikes against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan prior to the September 11 attacks, and the CIA for failing to pass along crucial information about two of the hijackers at a terrorists' summit in Malaysia. Michael Isikoff joined us Friday, July 25, at noon ET for a live discussion on the report and its implications. Read the transcript below.

Exclusive--The 9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI

Michael Isikoff joined NEWSWEEK as an investigative correspondent in June 1994. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the Enron scandal, the Florida election recount, campaign finance abuses, presidential politics and other national issues. He has been a news analyst for MSNBC and a frequent guest on NBC's "Meet the Press," PBS's "Charlie Rose" and nationally syndicated radio talk shows.

Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998 and his coverage of the events that led to President Clinton's impeachment earned NEWSWEEK the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. He is the author of the New York Times best seller "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his reporting of the Lewinsky story and was named "Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999" by the Book-of-the-Month Club.

In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of the "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine. More recently, Isikoff was honored, along with a team of NEWSWEEK reporters, with the 2001 Ed Cunningham Memorial Award from the Overseas Press Club for best magazine reporting from abroad for NEWSWEEK's coverage of the war on terror.

Isikoff came to NEWSWEEK from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1991 for a story on gun-trafficking and violence. Before joining the Post, he was a reporter with the now-defunct Washington Star.

Michael Isikoff: Hi. I'm Michael Isikoff and I'm here to answer your questions about the 9-11 report. There's a lot of ground, so fire away.

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Evanston, IL: What was in the part of the report that was edited out on Saudi involvement in 9-11 and who was behind having it taken out?

Michael Isikoff: That is the $64,000 question. But in fact there is a lot in there about potential Saudi involvement that wasn't edited out in other portions of the report. The most intriguing area involves Omar Al-Bayoumi, a Saudi "student" who met the two hijackers, Almihdhar and Alhazmi, shortly after they came into the country, took them into San Diego, set them up in an apartment and otherwise helped them get settled into the U.S. Who was he working for--and why was he extending all this aid to these two strange men from Saudi Arabia?

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Dayton, OH: Why does the administration continue to do business as usual with the Saudis government, despite evidence tying them to the 9-11 tragedy?

Michael Isikoff: Its a complicated relationship. I was just talking to a former senior law-enforcement official about this, who said to me, "there's no question the Saudis play both sides of the fence." They help us in some areas, cooperate and help us arrest genuine terrorists--then they block our investigations into other suspects.

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Miami, FL: Could it be that the main reason for certain aspects of this report being classified has to do with a cover up of the degree of incompetence experienced at the highest levels in the CIA and FBI?

Michael Isikoff: Its hard to argue that too strongly because there is so much evidence in the report of FBI and CIA screw-ups--more than we knew about before.

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Baltimore, MD: Judging from the terrorists' strategies--first a car bomb in the basement car park of the WTC to the use of wide-bodied aircraft eight years later with catastrophic results--do you think we could match the terrorists' smarts and sufficiently prepare ourselves for the next attack, let's say five or ten years from now, or whenever they may choose to strike again?

Michael Isikoff: That's the hardest question to answer, because Al Qaeda has proven very smart and hitting us where we are most vulnerable and launching attacks that are different than what law enforcement is anticipating. They also are exceedingly patient; look at 9-11. The report makes clear that it was in the planning stages for years. Indeed, its mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, seems to have first conceived it after his experiences in Project Bojinka--the 1995 plot in the Philippines to blow up commercial airliners over the Pacific.

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Chicago, IL: Is Iraq mentioned in the report at all?

Michael Isikoff: Barely. There's one sentence in 900 pages, quoting some earlier testimony from Tenet saying that Mohammed Atta "may" have met with an Iraq intelligence agent in Prague--and that the CIA was working to corroborate this. My sense is that Tenet mentioned this in the first place for political reasons because nobody in the FBI and CIA takes that report seriously anymore--and not a scrap of evidence has surfaced to support the idea that the meeting took place.

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Champaign, IL: Why isn't the Saudi connection given more time in the press? Pressure from the Saudi and the pro-Saudi elements in the administration? Does implicating prominent members of the Saudi government hit too close to the Bush administration?

Michael Isikoff: Its certainly a sensitive area--and not just for the Bush administration. The Saudi connection goes back decades and, of course, has a lot to do with U.S. interests in a stable flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. It is a connection that is facilitated even more by the huge Saudi financial contributions to political and diplomatic figures in the United States. The Saudis have contributed millions, to pick just one example, to the presidential libraries of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush and, I have no doubt we will ultimately find, Bill Clinton.

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Brussels, Belgium: How is it that Bush wants to protect the only foreign country which the CIA had found to have direct links with Al Qaeda whereas he singled out Iraq as the culprit in spite of a CIA report concluding that Iraq had not been involved in terrorist activity in the last 10 years? Is the CIA of any use to this president?

Michael Isikoff: The CIA has been enormously useful to the president. Tenet has helped the Bush White House on many fronts; it was he who would have made the ultimate calls about what could, or could not, have been declassified for this report.
My sense is that the CIA has always been skeptical about too strong an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection and only went along with what Powell said to the U.N. after being very careful about the actual wording. (more was implied about this connection than was actually said, if you read the words closely.)

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Houston, TX: National-security people came to Crawford, Texas, to brief the president on or about Aug. 6, 2001. Was that standard procedure, and was it about a threat of attack and what was the president's response? Do you know anything about this? Will we people ever know?

Michael Isikoff: Yes, we have learned a lot more about that briefing thanks to the report. It had previously been acknowledged by Condi Rice that the briefing covered the matter of Al Qaeda using airplanes as weapons. When Condi Rice briefed the press on this last year, she dismissed the significance of the briefing, saying it was "very vague" and mostly "historical" and did not constitute a warning for the president. In fact, we now learn, the briefing was much more detailed--and alarming. Bush was told that members of Al Qaeda had come to and resided in the United States "for years" and that the "group apparently maintained a support structure here." It also included recent intelligence that bin Laden supporters were "planning attacks in the United States with explosives." None of this was disclosed by the White House before.

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Chippewa Falls, WI: I am a little disappointed to see yet another finger being pointed in the 9-11 catastrophe. Yes, it was a terrible. Yes, it was horrific. Yes, it may have had warning signs. Why is it that we still want to blame someone other than the terrorists? Doctors misdiagnose diseases, detectives misread evidence. FBI is only human, too. Everyone can make mistakes. What is that old saying "to err is human"? Nothing is errorproof in this world or any other, so lets quit wasting time pointing fingers at U.S. intelligence shall we?

Michael Isikoff: I take your point. But the investigators and the families of 9-11 victims say it is very important first, to understand, what went wrong and why this attack was not anticipated. The other question is accountability. If somebody really did screw-up and not do their job, then should they not be held accountable?

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Hackettstown, NJ: Clearly there were gaps in the intelligence-gathering prior to 9-11. However, the intelligence agencies are in a no win situation. Either they are criticized for not doing enough or criticized for violating civil liberties. Either way the politician will politicize the issue. My question is: what is a realistic expectation of the intelligence agencies in today's environment?

Michael Isikoff: Excellent question. Many of the biggest screw-ups--the lack of intelligence-sharing with law enforcement--grew out of guidelines and rules imposed over the years because of concerns about civil-liberties abuses. It was felt to be dangerous to civil rights to allow intelligence agencies to pass along info it gathers on suspected terrorists or spies inside the United States to FBI criminal agents; the intelligence information was often scooped up with secret national-security warrants (FISAs for the aficionados) issued by a secret court with much lower standards than for the usual criminal warrants.

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Richmond, VA: Does the report look into why, although for about 40 minutes, the Bush administration knew that hijacked planes were being crashed into buildings and that a hijacked plane was headed toward Washington, D.C., no action was taken to protect the city from the terrorist attack? Does the report look into how and why the plane was allowed to crash into the Pentagon?

Michael Isikoff: No.

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Seattle, WA: This commission should go far beyond intelligence. I'd like to know where our Air Force was on that day. It was much more than an intelligence breakdown--our skies were left wide open without a defense. I want to know why our Air Force wasn't in the air after it became clear there were four hijackings going on, or (if generosity must be allowed) maybe after the first building was hit. The collapse of intelligence is one thing, the collapse of our military readiness and response on that morning has nothing to do with intelligence. Rules, regulations and procedures have been on the books for 20 years or so, including a section (or two) on responding to hostile or hijacked aircraft. It seems that these established procedures for responding to such events was not followed--WHY NOT?

Michael Isikoff: These and other areas some of the questioners are asking about will be covered by the independent commission looking into 9-11 whose report is due out next May. This was a report by the House-Senate intelligence committees and focused principally on the performance of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.

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Syosset, NY: You've been covering the FBI and law enforcement for a long time. Do ever get weary from it? Would you like to write about other things?

Michael Isikoff: Yes--I would like to get back to write about other matters, but the terrorism/intelligence stories--9-11, Iraq, uranium, etc.--just keep coming.

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Los Angeles, CA: What is the Bush family connection with Osama bin Laden?

Michael Isikoff: There is no Bush family "connection" to Osama bin Laden. What you may be referring to is something a little different. Bush's father, the former president, is on the advisory board of the Carlyle Group--a somewhat secretive investment group (which has lots of prominent former political leaders of all stripes working for it.) Among the investors over the years in Carlyle was the bin Laden family--which actually runs a mainstream, entirely legitimate construction conglomerate in Saudi Arabia. Osama's current relations with members of his family is far from clear, but the leaders of the bin Laden family will say he has been excommunicated from the family and they have nothing to do with him. At any rate, the bin Ladens have since withdrawn from the Carlyle Group so as not to cause Bush Sr. or other prominent Carlyle executives any image problems.

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Suffern, NY: Good Morning. My question concerns that of who funded the 9-11 attacks? If the Saudi's did assist in the funding, what gain do they have? Why is the "hiding" of that part of the report so classified? Thank you for your time.

Michael Isikoff: It is not clear that the report found that the Saudis were "funding" 9-11; what has been alleged, separately, are two things. One is that prominent Saudis, including members of the royal family, have poured millions into state-run Islamic charities--some of which have been infiltrated at various places around the globe by bin Laden sympathizers, resulting in money flowing to Al Qaeda. Separately, there is an issue over whether two of the individuals mentioned in the report who fraternized and assisted the hijackers--Bayoumi and a man named Osama Basnan--had gotten financial support from the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. There is no question that Basnan's wife received about $130,000 in support from Princess Haifa. The Saudi Embassy says this was simply charity and she does that for a lot of people. It is also possible that somebody at the Saudi Embassy or the Saudi government recommended Basnan's wife for this largesse.

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Seattle, WA: With regards to the possibility of aircraft used as weapons, I'm surprised the report does not mention at least as a footnote the fictional book published by Tom Clancy in 1996, "Executive Orders," which includes a "kamikaze" 747 strike on the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress. I just read part of this book recently and was amazed at the parallels with 9-11. Perhaps bin Laden or KSM read this and combined elements of it with the failed Bojinka plane plot. It's even more creepy because the book combines a plane attack with a simultaneous bio-weapon attack (interesting when you consider the anthrax attacks just after 9-11).

Michael Isikoff: Sounds like its a good question for Tom Clancy.

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Fairfax, VA: How long did it take you to read all 900+ pages?

Michael Isikoff: Actually, haven't finished it all yet--but I have spent hours reading the passages I am most interested in. Also sat through a two-hour briefing yesterday by a top investigator who outlined what was contained in the report.

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Mesquite, TX: Nice job on the Monday-morning quarterbacking. Before 9-11 it took an act of God to investigate suspected terrorist groups. It was more important to be politically correct and not upset the ACLU. Even after 9-11, the American public gets upset when certain groups are investigated, thanks to the inaccurate reporting of the American media. What about the 9-11 report not finding a "smoking gun"? What makes these congressional members experts on how to investigate terrorism matters?

Michael Isikoff: There was a large staff investigative staff made up of, among others, former FBI agents, CIA analysts and government officials headed by Eleanor Hill, a respected former federal prosecutor and inspector general for the Pentagon.

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Savannah, GA: And will you hammer the point home that leaked portions of the report make Bush's claims of an Al Qaeda link to Saddam Hussein out to be a lie (http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030723-064812-9491r)? Will you delve into the reasons why the administration didn't want this report in the first place and why it purposely attempted to stall it at every turn? When will the "mainstream" press ever actually accuse Bush of lying, instead of giving him the "bad information" out? Don't you see a parallel to the papa Bush claims about not knowing anything during the arms-for-hostages event? Isn't it interesting that just shy of $100 million was spent investigating Clinton on every charge the Republicans could gin up (and thereby hindering his ability to govern) and it is considered unpatriotic to investigate the seemingly huge lies told by Bush and his PNAC cronies? Isn't it amazing that the stories change and it is NEVER Bush's fault? Speaking of the Project for the New American Century (http://www.newamericancentury.org), when will the "mainstream" U.S. press tell the American people about this odd but powerful group (most of whose members skipped out of serving during the Vietnam era) whose aims for the past 20 or so years have been the domination of the Middle East by the U.S. by military means (http://pnac.info)?

These are just a few things I wonder about. Of course if this message were to get out, J. Ashcroft could decide that I am an enemy combatant, take away my American citizenship without trial, lock me up in a military prison without access to trial or representation, disregard judicial commands to allow me these things and then have me executed. Scary, huh? AND he wants MORE powers! Doesn't it remind you of a certain little European country in the '30s and '40s?

Michael Isikoff: I guess you're not TOO worried about being declared an enemy combatant otherwise you would not have written all these seditious comments on the Internet.

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New York, NY:
Who are the "Illuminati"? Are these real people--and could they also be behind the planning of the 9-11 attacks? Come on, answer truthfully ...

Michael Isikoff: Truthfully, I think that's wacko.

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Oklahoma City, OK: Why don't we hear anything about Osama bin Laden anymore? Has the U.S. administration called off the hunt for him?

Michael Isikoff: No, they just really don't know where he is. Most experts--for all they're worth--think he is still in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border--but the strange thing is there has not been a single credible sighting of OBL.

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Montclair, NJ: How much has communication between the FBI and CIA improved since 9-11? What has been done to fix the intelligence problems mentioned in the report? It was completed six months ago--you'd think some of the recommendations would already be in place.

Michael Isikoff: Well there has certainly been a lot of structural changes. All terrorism intelligence is not directed to a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center, in which both the FBI and CIA guys participate, sitting right next to each other and presumably talking to other and sharing information. Everybody says its better--also the Patriot Act changed the law to make it easier to share intelligence and law enforcement information. But only time will tell if its really improved or not.

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North Mankato, MN: Why was the Bush administration uninterested in attempting to locate and attack Osama bin Laden? I was intrigued by Bush's statement, preceding military action in Afghanistan, that he would, and I paraphrase, "not use a million-dollar missile to take out a $10 shack." Was it this frame of mind that may have led Bush to refuse to order a pre-emptive attack on Osama bin Laden? Thank you for your insights and your continued outstanding investigative reporting.

Michael Isikoff: There was a lot of government hand-wringing over trying to kill bin Laden for years. One of the things the report reveals is that Clinton repeatedly ordered attempts to kill him and actually had a nuclear submarine stationed off the Indian Ocean poised to launch another cruise missile strike against bin Laden. But the intelligence on his whereabouts was never good enough, so Clinton never pulled the trigger--expect for the one attack in August 1998 in retaliation for the embassy bombings (and of course we missed.)

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Chicago, IL: I've read the cost to mount the attacks is estimated at $175,000 to $250,000. Any indication in the report as to how this number was calculated?

Michael Isikoff: No, but its actually lower than what we've heard before. The previous estimates from the FBI had been about $500,000.

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Dayton, OH: Why are Americans so obsessed with finding someone at fault ... someone to blame here in the U.S.A.? The terrorists were at fault. No one could have prepared those people for what happened. Do we honestly think that through better intelligence from the CIA and FBI it could have been prevented? Why don't we focus our attention on the real culprits ... the terrorists!!!

Michael Isikoff: Of course the terrorist are "at fault." But its pretty stunning--and sobering--when you discover just how much was known about some of the hijackers prior to 9-11 and how much more we could have learned if everybody had been doing their job.

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Scranton, PA: You are a terrific reporter and I wish you were on TV more. Is the pressure on the FBI and CIA off a little bit to find Osama bin Laden and Saddam now that Saddam's sons have been killed?

Michael Isikoff: Not at all. I think there's nothing the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI and the White House would want more than to get both those guys.

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Atlanta, GA: It hardly seems a matter of Monday-morning quarterbacking to me. The USS Cole was blown up in the Summer of 2000. How much bolder do the terrorist have to be before we wake up and smell the coffee?

And that is not even taking into account the fishy relationships that go on in Saudi. It's stupid and naive to think the our national leaders aren't being briefed about these things. Fact is right after the USS Cole and right after Campaign 2000 the most pressing thing on the administration's national agenda was mandatory testing for grades 3 through 8. As the quote goes ... facts are frustrating things.

Michael Isikoff: It is amazing when you read all the terrorist warnings that were being issued by the U.S. intelligence community throughout the late 1990s and right through the summer of 2001--and then stack that up against how little our political leaders were talking about the threat. In fact, I don't remember the terrorism issue even being mentioned during any of the Bush-Gore presidential debates in 2000--and yet it has turned into the dominant issue of our time.

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Reno, NV: Why isn't Bush being impeached for breaking international treaties, since these have the same binding authority as U.S. federal law?

Why did the Japanese Times Online report the story of 300 drums of "yellowcake" refined uranium ore in Iraq on May 8, 2003, when there is nothing anywhere else about it?

Michael Isikoff: I don't believe international treaties have the same binding authority in the U.S. as federal law--especially if they are not ratified by the U.S. Senate as many of them haven't been.

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Carlsbad, CA: How can anyone say that the Saudis are helping in the war on terror after the bombing of the Khobar Towers if the Saudis denied the U.S. access to the suspects and executed them before any U.S. agent could even see them? By the way, have you read Dore Gold's "Hatred's Kingdom?"

Michael Isikoff: Yes, I have read Dore Gold's book. He has some interesting stuff. By the way, it was the earlier 1995 Riyadh bombing in which the Saudis executed the suspects before we could talk to them; not Khobar Towers.

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Tahlequah, OK: I recollect hearing a report about the Bush administration's refusal to take seriously Bill Richardson's briefing about Al Qaeda's growing threat, following the transition of power. The story smacked of an arrogance on the administration's part, which has since become more apparent. Was there any substance to this report? If so, was this part of the investigation?

Michael Isikoff: I believe you're talking about Richard Clarke's briefing for the Bush NSC aides; not Bill Richardson. In any case, Clarke is quoted quite extensively in the report--especially about how FBI field offices didn't seem engaged on Al Qaeda cases.

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Modesto, CA: Do you think the intelligence officials are being straight with the public about what they knew--or didn't know--about potential plots to attack the WTC and Pentagon?

Michael Isikoff: See my earlier answer about the Aug. 6, 2001, briefing for the president in Crawford. Its pretty clear from the report that they weren't totally straight about everything that was told.

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Richmond, VA: Has anyone in the FBI or CIA lost their job because of this? It seems like someone should be accepting some blame for the pre-9-11 intelligence failures.

Michael Isikoff: So far as I know, no one at either agency has lost their job or even been demoted. I think that is an irritant for the 9-11 families.

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Evanston, IL: I can't imagine why the information about Saudis is being kept secret. All this talk about "perfectly reasonable explanations."

It's just a fact that about 14 of the hijackers were Saudi citizens. Why in the world are we failing to hold them accountable? This issue is the sleeper issue in my opinion--that the president will eventually be held accountable for protecting them.

Michael Isikoff: It was 15 of the hijackers, not 14, who were Saudis. Its pretty clear that some Democrats--especially Graham and Lieberman--want to make this a political issue. It could well become one--especially if the victims' families continue to push it.

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Washington, DC: Have you read through the report? From what you've seen, do you think the attacks could have been prevented?

Michael Isikoff: I think with a little luck and a little greater vigilance it is very possible the attacks could have been prevented.

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Montgomery Village, MD: There is a theory circulating that Vice President Cheney put an "intelligence block" on activity in Saudi Arabia in the months leading up to 9-11 as a means of protecting Enron in its secret negotiations regarding an Afghan oil pipeline which also involved the Carlyle Group (Bush Sr.'s business) and the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia. Inadvertently, this "intelligence block" led to the intelligence failure of 9-11, resulting in the deaths of 3,000 innocent people. Is there any substance to this theory?

Michael Isikoff: That's wild--and almost certainly totally bogus.

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Rochester, NY: Why did it take six months to get this report released?

Michael Isikoff: It's clear from this and other questions that the classification aspect of this could well get traction. It is fascinating to watch how this plays out--because the NSC people at the White House feel very strongly about protecting the U.S.-Saudi relationship. They say we are working some highly sensitive cases with the Saudis right now and they have been very helpful to U.S. interests on a wide variety of fronts--only they can't talk about it.
We'll see. Anyway, enjoyed this exercise and I urge all of you to read the report on your own.
Bye Bye.

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