The US President, Mr Bush, is under intense pressure to make sweeping changes in US intelligence-gathering following the report of the commission investigating the attacks in the US on September 11th, 2001, writes Conor O'Clery in New York
The 10-member bipartisan commission recommended the creation of a new intelligence centre under a powerful national intelligence director to bring a unified command to more than a dozen intelligence agencies.
Commission chairman Mr Thomas Kean said the 19 hijackers succeeded in their attacks because they exploited "deep institutional failings within our government".
They "penetrated the defences of the most powerful nation in the world. They inflicted unbearable trauma on our people, and at the same time they turned the international order upside down."
The report identified ten missed opportunities to counter the plot to attack New York and Washington, but says: "We cannot know whether any single step or series of steps would have defeated" the hijackers.
While scathing about institutional failures by both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the panel's 567-page final report does not blame Mr Bush or former president Mr Bill Clinton for the failure to disturb or even delay the plan of Osama bin Laden to attack the US.
Mr Kean, a Republican, and the commission's Democrat vice-chairman, Mr Lee Hamilton, presented Mr Bush with a copy of the report yesterday morning.
Mr Bush thanked them for a "really good job" and their "very solid, sound recommendations about how to move forward".
The commission said the biggest failure was one of imagination. "We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat."
While the report does not single out any individual, it makes clear the fault lay with a failure in the CIA and FBI to follow up leads and co-ordinate. The Bush administration is seen as slow to react to warnings from counter-terrorism staff.
Many of the findings have emerged at public hearings, but it sheds new light on contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. It reveals that an Iraqi delegation travelled to Afghanistan in July 1998 to meet with the ruling Taliban and with bin Laden and possibly offer sanctuary in Iraq.
However, the report does not justify claims made by the Bush administration of Iraq collaboration with al-Qaeda in attacking the US.
It urged the government to look into the possibility of help given by Iran to al-Qaeda and Hizbullah.
Coinciding with the report, a surveillance video has emerged showing four hijackers passing through security at Washington Dulles International Airport and setting off alarms, but still being allowed to board the plane that was used to attack the Pentagon.
Former White House counter-terrorism expert Mr Richard Clarke said the commission "did not talk about a number of things, like what effect is the war in Iraq having on our battle against terrorism".