Washington: The White House had prior knowledge of possible terrorist attacks by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network on the United States, according to a an August 6, 2001 memo prepared for President George W Bush.

The memo, released yesterday (Apr 10, 2004), also said that in mid-2001 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents suspected that al-Qaeda was preparing air hijackings in the United States.

The document, called President's Daily Brief, has now been declassified. It is titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US"

Critics of the Bush administration have said that if the President had not been obsessed by Iraq, he would have taken this warning seriously and perhaps prevented the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon one month and five days later.

To defend itself, the White House issued the fact sheet claiming that the memo has nothing new and that it was prepared at the request of President Bush himself who was fully alive to the threat of al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked planes and slammed them into New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth plane was hijacked but crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks.

An independent commission investigating the attacks has called for the White House to release the memo, which was highlighted in sworn public testimony to the commission by National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice.