
Family members of victims killed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center examine a joint congressional report on the attacks on Capitol Hill prior to a news conference by members of the congressional inquiry panel. Photo by AP
This week's report on intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks also includes stark reminders of the danger terrorism still poses to Americans and their Western allies. One footnote cites a CIA estimate that as many as 120,000 men - a small army trained in military or terrorist tactics - may have passed through Afghan training camps between 1979 and 2001. Some 15,000 to 20,000 are believed to have been trained by Osama bin Laden. Another section details efforts by al-Qaida to build more devastating weapons. Since 1999, bin Laden's network has been "experimenting with enhancing conventional explosives with radioactive material," the report warns. And the narrative about the 19 suicide hijackers' activities suggests that bin Laden's chief of operations, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had an extensive network in place inside the United States that helped facilitate the hijackers when they arrived.