It took nearly two years, but the U.S. government to investigate what went wrong.

Today we present this report and these recommendations to the President of the United States, to the

United States Congress and the American people.

The 9-11 Commission set up in the fall of 2002 was led by Republican Thomas Kane, who

you just heard, and Democrat Lee Hamilton.

Their task was to study what led to the disaster of 9-11 and make recommendations to try to

prevent such a thing from ever happening again.

If you look back, all of us had signals.

Lee Hamilton.

We recite those signals at great length in the report and we simply did not put them together.

One thing that final report zeroed in on the presidential transition process, namely

the chaotic end to the 2000 election, recounts in Florida, Bush versus Gore, how that delayed

the process of putting key national security staff in place.

That delay, to quote the report, hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting,

clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees in the national security

arena.

We need a better process for transitions between one administration and another for national

security officials, so that this nation does not lower its guard every four or eight years.

Consider this.

With a President consumed by his election loss and a President-elect boxed out of the

transition process, some former national security officials are worried that America's

guard is lowered right now.

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