John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, turned down a request from the FBI for extra resources to fight terrorism a day before the 9/11 attacks, a report said today.

An independent panel investigating the al-Qaeda attacks has concluded in a preliminary report that prior to September 11 counterterrorism was not a priority for Mr Ashcroft.

The FBI had requested increased finance for improved technology for its anti-terrorist investigations, according to the report.

"Acting FBI director Thomas Pickard told us he made an appeal to Attorney General Ashcroft for further counter-terrorism enhancements not included in this budget proposal. On September 10 (2001), the attorney general rejected that appeal."

Mr Ashcroft is due to give evidence to the commission today which is now concentrating on the intelligence agencies role before the attacks.

He is expected to face sharp questioning about whether he and the Justice Department were sufficiently focused on the threat from al-Qaeda before the attacks which killed 3,000 people in New York and Washington.

A Justice Department document that set out priorities for the rest of 2001 issued on May 10 of that year said that the top priorities was reducing gun violence and combating drug trafficking. There was no mention of counterterrorism.

Both the FBI and CIA were criticised by Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, for intelligence failures in her testimony last week.

The report said that in the years before the attacks, counterterrorism investigations that generally resulted in fewer prosecutions "were viewed as backwaters" because FBI agents were rewarded based on arrests, indictments, and prosecutions.

In the three years before September 11, there was no great increase in the money that the FBI were given to fight terrorism though its agents identified a network of extremist Islamic organisations working within the United States.

Communications between field agents were often so poor that they did not know "what investigations agents in their own office, let alone in other field offices, were working on."

The FBI has faced mounting scrutiny since a memorandum to President Bush, released on Saturday by the White House, indicated that before September 11, the bureau had about 70 investigations in the United States related to al-Qaeda.

Members of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States have indicated they will closely question the FBI and CIA leaders in hearings.