A CIA inquiry into the agency’s performance before the September 11, 2001 terror attacks directly blames George Tenet, its former director, for the failures leading up to the atrocity.

Mr Tenet’s leadership was so poor that the CIA’s inspector general recommended in June 2005 that the CIA set up “accountability boards” to consider disciplinary action against him and other top officials for their failures. But the request was turned down by his successor, Porter Goss.

The internal CIA report, declassified by a congressional committee yesterday, is the first independent assessment that lays the agency’s intelligence failures before the terror attacks squarely at Mr Tenet’s door.

Although Mr Tenet had declared as long ago as 1998 that the threat from al-Qaeda was a top priority, the report found that he failed to produce a comprehensive strategy to fight Osama bin Laden’s terror organisation before the September 11 attacks. It said that he did not make effective use of his authority to marshall support for a counter-terrorism effort against a network he said America was at war with three years before the hijackings.

Mr Tenet, “by virtue of his position bears ultimate responsibility for the fact that no such strategic plan was created, despite his specific direction that this should be,” the report said.

Mr Tenet, along with three other top CIA officials, were singled out in the report for not using all the funds allocated for counter-terrorism activities. Mr Tenet was also criticised for failing to allow intelligence to flow freely to various departments within the US intelligence networks.

Poor coordination among its various units resulted in the centre failing to understand earlier the pivotal role of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, the report said.

“This intelligence was not voluminous and its significance is easier to understand in hindsight, but it was noteworthy even in the pre9/11 period because it included the allegation that KSM was sending terrorists to the United States to engage in activities on behalf of Bin Laden,” it said.

The report, which was completed in June 2005, said top CIA officers “did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner” and it described a “systemic breakdown” in a watch list for tracking terrorism suspects who seek to enter the United States.

Mr Tenet resigned from the agency in 2004. In a statement last night he called the CIA report “wrong”.

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