July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Sept. 11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean said the U.S. should put greater effort into monitoring, rather than disrupting, terrorist finance networks to prevent future attacks in the U.S.

``Right now we've been spending a lot of energy in the government to dry up sources of funding,'' Kean, a Republican, said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' program. ``It might be more productive to spend more time following the money because you can disrupt plots, you can find out what's going on, if you can follow these money trails.''

The commission's report, released on Thursday, found it cost the al-Qaeda terror network between $400,000 and $500,000 to kill nearly 3,000 people in 2001, and the U.S. remains unable to determine the origin of those funds, Kean said. ``We'll never dry up all the money,'' he said.

The 10-member, bipartisan commission's report cited failures by the government to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot and recommended about three-dozen steps to prevent future attacks, including creation of a national intelligence director and changes in congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The report said it appeared that no foreign government funded al-Qaeda except the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan and sheltered the group. Osama Bin Laden's network found ``fertile fund-raising ground'' among people in Saudi Arabia, though not from its government or leaders, the report said.

Berger `Distraction'

Lee Hamilton, the commission's vice chairman, said the commission has seen all of the documents former President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, removed from the National Archives and that his actions did not hurt the panel's investigation.

Berger quit on July 20 as an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, 60, because of a Justice Department investigation into his removal of the classified documents on terrorism. ``We're very sure that the final report, the integrity of it, is not compromised in any way because of that distraction,'' said Hamilton, a Democrat.

Berger was reviewing the documents last July, September and October to prepare for hearings by the commission, Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, has said. Berger testified before the commission in March.

No `Actionable Intelligence'

The commission concluded that faulty U.S. intelligence- gathering, law enforcement, border security and airport security contributed to the failure to stop the attacks in which hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington. A single intelligence director is needed to ensure that U.S. agencies focus on the most serious threats, the panel's report said.

The panel also said President George W. Bush, 58, and Clinton, 57, didn't comprehend ``just how many people al-Qaeda might kill and how soon it might do it,'' calling that a ``failure of imagination.''

``We just didn't think that people hated us so much,'' Hamilton said on ``Meet the Press.''

``Generally we just could not imagine that sort of thing happening,'' he said.

While the Clinton administration had considered attacking Bin Laden, the administration lacked ``actionable intelligence'' and ``didn't want to take the danger of missing him and blowing up innocent people,'' said Kean, 69, a Republican former governor of New Jersey. ``They came close to pulling the trigger and then sort of pulled back.''

Bush said last week the report contains ``solid, sound'' recommendations and that he will review them, without commenting on specific recommendations for overhauling U.S. intelligence.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said he'll ask leaders of congressional committees to hold hearings on the recommendations in the next several months.

The Senate Committee on Government Affairs will begin hearings next month, during the congressional recess. Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Congress should enact legislation before the end of the year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Heidi Przybyla in Boston hprzybyla@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 25, 2004 13:25 EDT