The FBI agent stood on the podium before the hostile gathering and fielded questions. "What's the best way to ship weapons from the US to friends living overseas?" one of the radical attendees asked. "Make sure you the guidelines of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (a federal agency) when you send the weapons," the agent responded matter-of-factly.

The answer -- the meeting and exchange actually happened ten months after the first World Trade Center bombing and in the middle of first trial of those implicated in the terrorist attack. This bizarre incident is recounted in a timely book by veteran investigative journalist Gerald Posner. Titled While America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9-11 (Random House, New York), the fascinating and well-documented book is an indictment of not just the chief U.S. intelligence agencies, the FBI and CIA, but also US presidential administrations from Gerald Ford to George, Jr., the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other government agencies, and three countries that supposedly are Uncle Sam's staunch allies in the War on Terrorism.

After reading While America Slept, it's easy to conclude that the failure to prevent 9-11 was, without question, the biggest intelligence blunder in US history. The apologists for the fiasco will counter that any government could look bad in hindsight, that's its often difficult to gather and interpret intelligence and that officials can make honest mistakes . . . blah, blah, blah.

In an interview with The Daily Star, Posner put his investigation in clear perspective. "There were a number of chances to break up the plot without ever knowing the details of it. And other countries, from Germany to Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, did not help in sharing (information) that might also have been critical."

The case Posner builds is so factual in detail and overwhelming in content that it makes one wonder how prepared and competent is the US government to prevent another 9-11 atrocity and to wage war against ruthless terrorists.

Here are just a few of the investigative journalist's findings: - Bin Laden could have been history as early as the mid-1990s, but the US government failed on numerous occasions to kill or capture him. For instance, when the terrorist was in Sudan in 1996, the Sudanese government, in an effort to improve its relations with Uncle Sam, offered to arrest Bin Laden and turn him over to any country that had legitimate criminal charges against him. Clinton administration officials doubted Sudan's sincerity and never followed up.

Germany had an informant, a 44-year old Syrian named Mahmoun Darkazanli, who was involved with many of the 9-11 hijackers. CIA officials told Posner that Germany failed to share their asset with the US government.

The CIA and FBI were tracking several of the 9-11 hijackers after they entered the US, more than 20 months before the 9-11 attack, but lost them.

In July 2001, the FBI's Phoenix, Arizona office sent a memo to the Bureau's head office in Washington, DC, suggesting it investigate whether Islamic fundamentalists were training at American flight schools. "This memo never made it above middle management at the FBI headquarters," Posner reveals. - But what's really disturbing is to learn about the rivalries, jealousies, stonewalling and petty spats that went on between the FBI and CIA, the US's two major intelligence gathering agencies, as the terrorists plotted to destroy their enemy. To cite one example -- the FBI asked the CIA to conduct a background check on the individuals listed in the Phoenix memo, but did not share the contents of the memo with the agency.

Posner reserves his most explosive revelation for the last chapter -- the double game radical Islamic fundamentalist leaning intelligence officials in Pakistan and members of the Waffling Wahabi royal family of Saudi Arabia have played in the War on Terrorism. Posner's findings not only confirm the secret deal Saudi Arabia worked out with Bin Laden in 1991 to keep his murderous attention away from the kingdom, but provides startling insight into what went on in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, one of Bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants.

According to two anonymous CIA sources, who spoke independently to Posner, Zubaydah told his interrogators that Prince Ahmed, a nephew of Saudi King Fahd, and Mushaf Mir, a high ranking Pakistani military officer with close ties to elements within ISI, the Pakistani agency, most sympathetic to Bin Laden and radical Islamic fundamentalism, knew beforehand that an attack on American soil was scheduled for 9-11, although they didn't know what kind it would be.

Curiously, Prince Ahmed bin Salman, and Mir, along with three others associates, are now dead. Conspiracy? Posner doesn't draw any conclusions, but one can be sure, though, that many more books will be written to probe these strange developments.

But the big question, of course, is have there been any positive changes since 9-11 in the way the US gathers intelligence on terrorists? Yes, but much more needs to be done, Posner told us. "You cannot expect 40 plus years of ingrained hostility and competition between various US intelligence agencies to disappear in a couple of years," he explained.

Posner would like to see more coordination between the various branches of intelligence and less overlap of duties and responsibilities, adding that more power should be given to Homeland Security to coordinate intelligence.

I drew three conclusions from Posner's book: 1) Those in power who slept while America's enemies plotted the biggest domestic terrorist attack in the country's history must be held accountable. 2) The U.S. faces difficult ahead in its battle with terrorists unless the government works harder to get its intelligence gathering house in order. 3) Unfortunately, Uncle Sam needs to watch its back as its pursues the terror network.

Ron Chepesiuk is a Rock Hill, South Carolina journalist, a Visiting Professor at Chittagong University, and a former Fulbright Scholar to Bangladesh.