The Commission's mandate is to provide a full and complete accounting of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future. Specifically, Section 604 of Public Law 107-306 requires the Commission to investigate "facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001," including those relating to intelligence agencies; law enforcement agencies; diplomacy; immigration, non-immigrant visas, and border control; the flow of assets to terrorist organizations; commercial aviation; the role of congressional oversight and resource allocation; and other areas determined relevant by the Commission for its inquiry.

9-11 Commission, formally National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was a bipartisan study group created by Former U.S. President George W. Bush and the United States Congress on November 27, 2002, to examine the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The commission’s report served as the basis for a major reform of the U.S. intelligence community, marking some of the most far-reaching changes since the creation of the modern national security bureaucracy at the start of the Cold War in the late 1940s. The commission was composed of five Republicans and five Democrats. The commission’s findings, compiled as ‘The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States’, were delivered in July 2004.

As a part of its mandate, the Commission was required to pick up where the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 left off. This inquiry was conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, into the activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks. The investigation began in February 2002 and the final report was released in December 2002. The inquiry had made a significant contribution in explaining some failures of American intelligence in preventing the attack, and the role of the commission was to report all the facts and make recommendations.

The aim of this commission would be to assume a real-time role (as of November 27, 2002) and conduct thorough investigations and debates on this front, and pass a resolution outlining recommendations for reforming and restructuring the U.S. intelligence community and other national security agencies to deal with the threat of 21st-century terrorism.