US asks a disturbing question: What did the President know?

At last the dam has broken. For eight months America has tiptoed around the most disturbing questions of all surrounding 11 September. Did the Bush administration fail to act on the evidence it had in hand, and prevent the worst terrorist attack in modern history?

From time to time the issue would crop up, only for it to be deflected by the feeling that the moment was still too close, and the argument that a post mortem which was bound to be painful for the country's security and intelligence services might interfere with the war against terrorism those agencies were helping to wage.

But all these considerations have been swept away by the disclosure that President George Bush was warned by the CIA in the first week of August that al-Qa'ida might be planning to hijack aircraft.