US aviation and military officials responded clumsily to the 11 September 2001 attacks, a report for the US Congress's special commission said today.
The staff report for the investigation panel found that a White House order to shoot down hijacked planes did not reach Air Force jets until after the last airliner had crashed.
It concluded fighters had no chance to intercept the ill-fated aircraft, much less shoot them down. It blamed uncertainty about key developments, poor coordination, lack of useful information from the Federal Aviation Administration, and the military's air defence shortcomings.
'They were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States . They struggled under difficult circumstances to improvise a homeland defence against an unprecedented challenge they had never encountered and had never trained to meet,' the report concluded.
The report was released as the commission probing the attacks began its final public hearing.
A repot published yesterday said al-Qaeda originally planned to crash 10 hijacked aircraft.
It said the White House, the Capitol, CIA and FBI headquarters and sites in California were the targets.
The report also said the commission had found no credible evidence that Iraq had helped al-Qaeda to carry out the attacks in which almost 3,000 people were killed.
