What Senator Leahy has said

1) "And, of course, the two questions that the Congress would not ask, because the Republicans won't allow it, is, why did 9/11 happen on George Bush's watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen? And secondly, when they had Osama bin Laden cornered, why didn't they get him? Had there been an independent congress, one that could ask questions, these questions would have been asked years ago. We'd be much better off. We would have had the answers to that. I think with those answers, we would not have the fiasco we have in Iraq today, we would have caught Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan would be a more stable place, and the world would be safer."

Interview with Amy Goodman, 9/29/2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/29/150254

2) "Other investigators have articulated similar conclusions that the intelligence failure was not due to a lack of information, nor even necessarily due to an inability to integrate disparate data, but was rather the result of inexplicable inaction by Washington. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), in an interview with CNN, commented: 'There was plenty of information available before September 11. I think historians are going to find, tragically, that, had it been acted upon, the hijackers could have been stopped.' Former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) further observed: 'I don't believe any longer this is a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable road map. And we want to know why they didn't act on it.'

The War On Truth, by Nafeez Ahmed, page 260, quoting a June 6, 2002 interview with CNN's Robert Novak.

Original transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0206/08/en.00.html