WASHINGTON, June 10 (Xinhuanet) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) had missed at least five chances to detect the presence of two of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackers afterthey first entered the United States in early 2000, a governmental report has concluded.

    The inability to detect the hijacking plot amounts to a "significant failure" by the FBI and was caused in large part by "widespread and long-standing deficiencies" in the way the agency handled terrorism and intelligence cases, according to the report released Thursday by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A.Fine.

    The report said the FBI lost several important opportunities to find Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Al-Mihdhar before the Sept. 11 attacks. Previous reports, including one by an independent Sept. 11 commission, focused more heavily on the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) failure to track the men after a pivotal terrorist summit meeting in Malaysia.

    The FBI said in a statement that it agreed with many of Fine's conclusions but "has taken substantial steps to address the issues presented in the report."

    The report described problems within the FBI, including a shoddy analytical program, problems with sharing intelligence information and the lack of priority given to anti-terrorism investigations.

    The report was made public only after being kept secret for a year. It said investigators were stymied by bureaucratic obstacles,communication breakdown and a lack of urgency.

    The report disclosed that an FBI agent assigned to the CIA wanted to pass on information to the FBI about Alhazmi and Al-Mihdhar in early 2000, but was blocked by a CIA supervisor and did not aggressively follow up.

    A series of bungled opportunities thereafter led to the failure for law enforcement agencies to grab the best chance to have detected or disrupted the Sept. 11 plot, the report said. Enditem