"We are safer than we were before 9/11," said Tom Kean, chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks and a former New Jersey governor. "But we are not safe."

The 9/11 Commission Report is critical of the White House under Presidents Bush and Clinton, Congress and numerous federal and local agencies for failing to detect, thwart and better respond to the hijackings. But its assessments of the intelligence and security failures leading up to the attacks have raised acute concern because of the recent warnings by senior administration officials that al-Qaida wants to attack on American soil soon.

Multiple times over almost two years some of the 19 hijackers bumped up against the CIA, FBI, the immigration system and, finally, airport security — clearing gate searches with box cutters. But they were never snared.

"Given the catastrophic results of the 9/11 attacks, it is tempting to depict the plot as a set plan executed to near-perfection," the nearly 600-page report says. "This would be a mistake. The 9/11 conspirators confronted operational difficulties, internal disagreements and even dissenting opinions within the leadership of al-Qaida."

Nearly 20 months in the making, the report stops short of saying the attacks were necessarily preventable. But it cites 10 missed "operational opportunities" to break al-Qaida's complex chain of planning and execution, which originally included a plot to hijack 10 planes. President Bush praised the commission for making "sound recommendations about how to move forward," including the creation of an intelligence czar.

The report was adopted unanimously by the 10-member, bipartisan commission. It now sets the stage for debate about how to reform the intelligence agencies that constitute the nation's first line of defense against terrorism.

"Our work isn't done until we make sure this report doesn't sit on a shelf somewhere," said Mindy Kleinberg, of East Brunswick, N.J., who lost her husband in the World Trade Center attack.

Still broken

Some of the intelligence failures that led to the attacks could easily happen again, the commissioners warned.

The CIA missed the big-picture indicators of the impending attacks, in part, because of its lax spying and piecemeal analysis.

The report cited numerous examples, including the failure to track two hijackers out of a seminal January 2000 planning meeting in Malaysia and then into the United States.

President Bush receives a copy of the Sept. 11 Commission's report from Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the panel.

The August 2001 arrest of terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, because of odd behavior at a Minnesota flight school, also failed to raise a red flag.

The failure by the CIA and FBI to communicate with each other left gaps that the hijackers were able to coast through. For example, the CIA neglected to add the Malaysia suspects' names to a terrorism watch list other agencies could have consulted.

"There is a deeply fundamental dysfunction about the way we go about gathering our intelligence," said commissioner and former Navy Secretary John Lehman.

Perhaps the most glaring example is the nation's lack of human intelligence — spies able to learn of terror plots before they're hatched.

Fixing the holes

Disagreement over how to reform the nation's sprawling network of 15 intelligence agencies has already started taking shape.

The commission recommends restructuring intelligence gathering under a newly created Cabinet-level director who would oversee the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies and head a national counterterrorism center.

In theory, the CIA director serves as the nation's intelligence chief. But the Pentagon controls much of the intelligence network and its $40 billion annual budget, and the various agencies often don't communicate.

"Need to share must replace need to know," said commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana.

Not everyone agrees.

John McLaughlin, the CIA's acting director, prefers to expand the CIA director's authority rather than create a new position.

Still, several senators plan to introduce legislation to enact the commission's recommendations, among them Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.

"We're going to keep the pressure on," he said.