Buck stops somewhere.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Bush has put a new twist on Harry S. Truman's defining credo: "The buck stops here."

Asked about the Aug. 6, 2001, memo he received on the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil - the one stunningly titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." - the president said he "never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America at a time and a place of an attack." Lacking such specifics, Bush apparently believes "the buck," or even any spare change, shouldn't stop at his desk - or any other desk in his administration.

Actually, there was a surprising degree of specificity in the CIA-drafted presidential daily briefing, or PDB, that the White House declassified and released over the weekend. Among other things, it disclosed that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of an active domestic terrorist network within the United States, that the FBI suspected that al-Qaeda could be preparing for airline hijackings and that the terrorist network even had federal buildings in New York under surveillance.

As the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission shifts its focus this week to intelligence shortcomings before the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it's vital for the panel to nail down exactly how the president and the FBI, the agency that has the primary responsibility of protecting this country from attack by terrorists on U.S. soil, responded - or didn't respond - to alarming information contained in the memo.

The president's memo also noted that the FBI had information indicating "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparation for hijackings or other types of attacks.'' It said the agency was "conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S." that it considered related to Osama bin Laden.

As the commission interviews FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other current and former top law enforcement and intelligence officials, it should determine why the FBI missed the mark so badly in those investigations. More importantly, the panel must determine whether the agency has corrected the miscommunications, bureaucratic dead ends, legal cul de sacs and other problems that a joint congressional committee last year said caused the FBI to miss repeated opportunities to unravel the Sept. 11 plot.

The commission is not, as some critics have argued - and as Bush's "buck-doesn't-stop-here" response suggests - engaged in second-guessing or election-year finger-pointing. It's a vital and patriotic mission that should have one and only one purpose: to make certain this nation is prepared for the next attempt by the bin Ladens of the world to wreak devastation on U.S. soil.