NEW YORK - United States Attorney-General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller were told soon after September 11 of a memorandum warning that extremists could be training at flight schools but neither told the President.
Citing Government officials, the New York Times said neither official briefed President George W. Bush about the memo from the FBI in Phoenix in July. It warned that Osama bin Laden's followers could be training at American flight schools.
The disclosure is expected to magnify criticism of the FBI's performance, including its failure to act on the memorandum before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Ashcroft and Mueller have not said publicly when they learned of the July 10 memorandum.
"But the officials [interviewed] said that within days of the attacks, senior law enforcement officials grasped the document's significance as a potentially important missed signal," the report added.
A senior Justice Department official said the Attorney-General was not briefed in any detail on the "Phoenix memo" until a month ago.
Mueller said yesterday that he feared suicide bombings that wreaked havoc on Israel could come to the US.
"I think we will see that in the future. I think it's inevitable," Mueller said yesterday. "I wish I could be more optimistic."
In other developments yesterday:
* The British Press Association said that US intelligence had received new reports that Osama bin Laden received a kidney transplant in late February.
Defence official have received persistent reports that the al Qaeda leader has severe kidney problems.
However, none has been satisfactorily verified.
The latest report, believed to come from informants, suggests that bin Laden received treatment in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
* ABC News reported that leaders of al Qaeda, Hizbollah and the militant Palestinian group Hamas put aside differences and held a secret summit meeting in Lebanon in late March to discuss tactics and an unprecedented level of joint activity.
Citing US intelligence and law-enforcement officials, ABC said the meeting could bring about a new round of attacks against the US, Britain and other targets.
* Militant Islamic groups like Hizbollah and Egypt's Islamic Jihad could be planning to attack the US and may be more capable of doing so than the al Qaeda network, the chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee said.
Senator Bob Graham confirmed that about two dozen "extremists" had recently entered America hidden in container ships.
"[They] jumped on ships outside the US, hid in the container cargoes until they got to the US and then disembarked and they've been lost in the American population," he said.
According to Graham's spokesman Paul Anderson, the Florida Democrat was briefed last week on a Coast Guard report this month on the stowaways.
They apparently jumped ship in Miami, Port Everglades, Florida, Long Beach, California, and Savannah, Georgia.
The Coast Guard, the FBI and US immigration authorities have refused to comment.
The alarming gaps in US port security have been a major concern of the Bush Administration since September 11.
Only 2 per cent of roughly 6 million containers that arrive aboard 7500 cargo ships each year are inspected.
Those ships are manned by about 200,000 sailors.
Anderson said that the senator had learned from the Coast Guard report, backed by other intelligence briefings, that the 25 people were believed to have slipped into the US between late April and May 15.
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Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
Bush kept in dark after September 11 attack
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