Tuesday, 25 September 2001 : "the companies & people"

Not on the list are three groups -- Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad -- that are frequently denounced by the United States. Still, they receive support from countries seen as potential members of the coalition Bush is trying to build against bin Laden.

Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said yesterday that the administration cannot present its full case "without revealing some sources and methods that we would not want to reveal." // Still, Goss and other officials with access to highly classified intelligence reporting said they were confident that even a "white paper" based solely on unclassified information could make a persuasive case against bin Laden and his terrorist network, al Qaeda. // What is known publicly about possible links between the 19 hijackers and bin Laden, however, falls well short of that mark...

One administration official said the disagreement over what should and should not be revealed by the government "is why this thing is not done." But another official who reviewed a working draft of the document, consisting of several dozen pages, predicted that it would be completed and released in several days. // "I think there are a lot of people, myself included, who believe it's an important piece in this war to present credible evidence," the official said. "But it's very much a work in progress."

While even highly sensitive intelligence is sometimes shared with such friendly countries as Britain, the official said, many governments may not need much convincing. // "They are coming to the same conclusion themselves, based on their own investigations," the official said.