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Wed Apr 14, 2004 02:33 PM ET By Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the CIA never informed a vacationing President Bush in August 2001 that a suspected Islamic extremist had been detected taking flight lessons, the panel investigating the Sept. 11 jetliner attacks on New York and Washington heard on Wednesday. As several commission members criticized what they called a complete intelligence failure ahead of the attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed, CIA Director George Tenet also said it would take another five years of restructuring to bring U.S. intelligence to the level the country...

WASHINGTON (AP) - CIA director George Tenet predicted Wednesday it will take "another five years of work to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs" to combat al-Qaida and other terrorist threats. "The same can be said for the National Security Agency, our imagery agency and our analytic community," Tenet testified before the commission investigating the worst terror attacks in the nation's history. Readily acknowledging that intelligence agencies "never penetrated the 9-11 plot," he added, "We all understood (Osama) bin Laden's intent to strike the homeland but were unable to translate this knowledge into an effective defense of...

WASHINGTON - The CIA (news - web sites) missed the big-picture significance of "tell-tale indicators" of impending terrorist attacks, partly because of its culture of a piecemeal approach to intelligence analysis, a federal panel probing the Sept. 11 attacks said Wednesday. With the commission holding a second day of hearings on U.S. intelligence leading up to the 2001 hijackings, preliminary findings from the panel's latest report concluded that a more detailed look at clues prior to Sept. 11 could have unveiled the plot behind the attacks. A more strategic analysis could have identified that the plot might require suicide hijackers...

CIA chief concedes it will take considerable time to improve intelligence defenses against terrorist threats WASHINGTON – CIA director George Tenet predicted Wednesday it will take "another five years of work to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs" to combat al-Qaeda and other terrorist threats. "The same can be said for the National Security Agency, our imagery agency and our analytic community," Tenet testified before the commission investigating the worst terror attacks in the nation's history. Readily acknowledging that intelligence agencies "never penetrated the 9-11 plot," he added, "We all understood (Osama) bin Laden's intent to strike...

George Tenet, CIA Director, is due to testify to the 9/11 Commission. Later today the FBI Director, Meuller, will testify.