thumb|The cover of the 9/11 Commission Report, a 585-page report released July 22, 2004 by the [[9/11 Commission on events leading up to the September 11 attacks and steps recommended to avoid a future terrorist attack]]

The 9/11 Commission Report, officially the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is the official report into the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It was prepared by the 9/11 Commission, chaired by former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, at the request of U.S. president George W. Bush and Congress.

The commission was established on November 27, 2002, 442 days after the September 11 attacks. The report, which is 585 pages in length, was originally scheduled for release on May 27, 2004, but Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert approved the commission's request for a sixty-day extension through July 26. The report was released on July 22, 2004, immediately to the public, and remains available for sale or free download.

Findings

thumb|[[Thomas Kean, chair of the 9/11 Commission]]

The 9/11 Commission interviewed over 1,200 people in 10 countries and reviewed over two and a half million pages of documents, including some closely guarded classified national security documents. The commission also relied heavily on the FBI's PENTTBOM investigation. Before it was released by the commission, the final public report was screened for any potentially classified information and edited as needed.

After releasing the report, commission chair Thomas Kean declared that both presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were "not well served" by the FBI and CIA.

In addition to identifying intelligence failures occurring before the attacks, the report provided evidence of the following:

  • Airport security footage of the hijackers as they passed through airport security;
  • Excerpts from the United Airlines Flight 93 cockpit voice recording, which recorded the sounds of the hijackers in the cockpit and the passengers' attempts to regain control; and
  • Eyewitness testimony of passengers as they described their own final moments to family members and authorities on airphones and cellphones from the cabins of doomed airliners.

The commission also concluded 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks were from Saudi Arabia, but the commission "found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization" to conspire in the attacks, or that it funded the attackers even though the report identifies that "Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al-Qaeda funding". Mohamed Atta, the leader of the attacks, was from Egypt. Two hijackers were from the United Arab Emirates, and one was from Lebanon. According to the commission, all 19 hijackers were members of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, led by Osama bin Laden. In addition, while meetings between al-Qaeda representatives and Iraqi government officials had taken place, the panel had no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had assisted al-Qaeda in preparing or executing the 9/11 attacks.

The commission's final report also offered new evidence of increased contact between Iran and al-Qaeda. The report contains information about how "at least eight" of the 9/11 hijackers passed through Iran, and indicates that officials in Iran did not place entry stamps in their passports. However, according to the report (Chapter 7), there is no evidence that Iran was aware of the actual 9/11 plot.

The commission report chose to place blame for failure to notify the military squarely upon the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Ben Sliney, FAA operations manager at Herndon, Virginia, and Monte Belger, FAA acting deputy administrator on 9/11, both stated to the commission that military liaisons were present and participating in Herndon's response as the events of 9/11 unfolded. Sliney stated that everyone who needed to be notified, including the military, was.

In addition to its findings, the report made extensive recommendations for changes that can be made to help prevent a similar attack. These include the creation of a National Intelligence Director over both the CIA and the FBI, and many changes in border security and immigration policy.

Public diplomacy and war on terror

The 9/11 Commission Report stated that "long-term success demands the use of all the elements of national power: diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy, and homeland defense."

In 2003, the U.S. government began to prioritize political and cultural support for the counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan. An Afghan regional official claimed that Afghanistan was on the right track for a stable government and begged the United States not to leave the theater, claiming that Afghanistan would lose progress if the U.S. withdrew their political support and local outreach to the public.

The 9/11 Commission stated that the United States envisioned an eventual Afghan government that was able to build a national army, coordinate infrastructure, and coordinate public services in major provinces throughout the country.

Other sources have criticized the commission for not digging deep enough to get to the core of the issues. In a 2004 interview with Bernard Gwertzman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said:

FAA counterterrorism expert Bogdan Dzakovic believes that the security failures at airports that allowed the hijackers to board the planes were not due to the failures in the system that the report identified. Furthermore, he stated that "Many of the FAA bureaucrats that actively thwarted improvements in security prior to 9/11 have been promoted by FAA or the Transportation Security Administration." The report did not mention his name, despite Dzakovic giving the following testimony to the commission regarding his undercover checks on airport security prior to 9/11: