The commission says the air-defence command was slow and confused in its response to the airliner hijacking attacks on New York and Washington, according to officials who have read a draft report of the commission's findings, the paper said.

The officials said the draft had been circulated in recent days among commission members and at the Pentagon in preparation for public release of the report on Thursday.

The Times said the Sept. 11 commission draft summarized the response of the military, the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) and other agencies with this passage:

"On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen. What ensued was a hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced."

The report, they said, suggests without explicitly saying that a more organized response by the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) might have allowed fighter pilots to reach one jetliner and shoot it down before it flew into the Pentagon, more than 50 minutes after the first of the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

Instead, the report finds, an emergency order from Vice President Dick Cheney authorising hijacked planes to be shot down did not reach pilots until the last of the four commandeered aircraft had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

Commission officials said Norad and the FAA believed elements of the criticism in the draft report were wrong or exaggerated, and were pressing for last-minute corrections, the Times said.

This week's commission hearings are the last the panel is scheduled to hold before it delivers a final report next month.