WASHINGTON, June 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Members of the Sept. 11 commission are joining together, almost a year after completing their final report, to press the White House for information showing whether the government has done enough to prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack, commission officials said.

    The New York Times quoted the officials as saying Monday that the 10 commissioners, acting through a private group they founded last summer, will present a letter within days to the White House asking it to allow the group to gather detailed information from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other agencies about the government's recent performance.

    Commissioners said they want the information to prepare for a series of public hearings scheduled to begin on Monday and to draft a privately financed report that will evaluate the government's counter-terrorism policies in the wake of the commission's final report last July.

    "We're going to ask a lot of questions," said Thomas H. Kean, who was chairman of the Sept. 11 commission and is now a board member of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, a private educational and lobbying group. "There are a lot of our recommendations that have not been implemented."

    The 9/11 Public Discourse Project has scheduled eight public hearings on the government's counter-terrorism efforts. The hearing on Monday will focus on the CIA and the FBI, the targets of the sharpest criticism in the commission's final report last year.

    A White House spokeswoman, Christie Parell, said Sunday: "We appreciate the work the commission did. We have acted on the vast majority of their recommendations and welcome their continued involvement. We look forward to receiving the letter."

    Members of the commission would no longer have any authority to force the administration of US President George W. Bush to hand over information or to make witnesses available. They do not have that subpoena power anymore.

    The commission went out of business last August after releasing a unanimous final report the month before demonstrating that incompetence and turf battles among the nation's intelligence agencies prevented the government from acting before Sept. 11, 2001, on intelligence suggesting an imminent al-Qaida attack. Enditem