Barriers To 9/11 Inquiry Decried

Lawmakers from both parties yesterday protested the Bush administration's lack of cooperation in the congressional inquiry into Sept. 11 intelligence failures and threatened to renew efforts to establish an independent commission.

The White House reacted to the complaints from members of the House and Senate intelligence committees by softening its objection to an independent commission. But the president's spokesman said such an independent probe should be "separate and apart from intelligence" -- a concession unlikely to satisfy lawmakers because it does not address the heart of their objections.

On the day a joint House and Senate intelligence committee released a staff report on the Sept. 11 failures and began to hold hearings, those involved in the congressional investigation said they had been thwarted by the administration's reluctance to share information about what the White House knew before last year's terrorist attacks.

"Are we getting the cooperation we need? Absolutely not," Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence committee, said in a joint appearance with Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.) on NBC's "Today" show.

Graham added: "What we're trying to do is to get people who had hands on these issues. . . . And what we're being told is, no, they don't want to make those kind of witnesses available."

Both Graham and Shelby yesterday endorsed the idea of independent panels. In his remarks at the start of the hearings, Shelby warned that "there may come a day very soon when it will become apparent that ours must be only a prelude to further inquiries."