Bush says nation needs better anti-terrorism intelligence

"We've got some work to do," Bush, in front of a backdrop of an American flag, told a rally of 2,000 people crammed into a downtown convention center in Arkansas. "In this new war, against this shadowy enemy, it's very important that we gather as much intelligence as we can."

Bush was in Arkansas to campaign for changes to the 1996 welfare law that would require recipients to work more hours and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to promote marriage.

The House and Senate Intelligence panels begin meeting jointly today to try to determine why government intelligence agencies did not do more to anticipate the Sept. 11 attacks.

The FBI has come under sharp criticism for not seeing a link between the case in Minneapolis of an alleged terrorist and the warnings of a Phoenix field agent that Middle Eastern men were training at American flight schools.

Newsweek reported this week that the CIA had tracked two of the Sept. 11 hijackers when they attended an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 and afterwards, but did not take action that could have prevented them from re-entering the United States.