Washington ? Congress’ Joint Intelligence Committee has received new clues from a “variety of sources” that, along with other intelligence already available, might have helped the U.S. prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, Sen. Bob Graham said Wednesday.

Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence panel, declined to provide details or the origin of the new information, but he noted that the committee has been receiving e-mails and other communications from sources that would have helped the FBI and intelligence agencies “connect the dots” in analyzing whether an attack was coming.

The senator said this information was being evaluated for its accuracy and relevance to the committee’s investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, but indicated he regarded the tips as credible enough to be taken seriously.

In addition, Graham said that in talks with intelligence officials in Germany, Poland and Russia over the congressional break he was told that at least one of these countries apparently had passed intelligence to the U.S. that would have been useful in preventing the attacks.

None of these new tips is of the caliber of information received from FBI agents in Phoenix and Minnesota that was essentially ignored by the bureau’s headquarters staff, the senator said. But if intelligence analysts had combined the new clues with the Phoenix and Minnesota information, Graham said, they “could have given an additional shape to this jigsaw puzzle” about the attackers.

The new disclosures came as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepared to hear testimony today from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Coleen Rowley, an agent in the FBI’s Minnesota office who blamed headquarters for frustrating the field office’s inquiry into Zacarias Moussaoui’s efforts to obtain flight training prior to Sept. 11.

Moussaoui is the only person who has been charged in connection with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The FBI had discovered that Moussaoui had inquired about taking flight lessons but was not interested in learning how to land planes.

Rowley, who wrote a scathing letter to Mueller about the FBI’s failure to follow up on her office’s information, including blocking an effort to look at information on Moussaoui’s laptop computer, also was interviewed by the intelligence panel’s staff for more than three hours on Wednesday. Graham said the joint committee likely would summon her as a witness later.

Meantime, a U.S. official confirmed that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed of Kuwait “played an instrumental role” in the Sept. 11 plot, but said earlier reports that described him as the “mastermind” are off-base.

“He’s been on the U.S. government’s radar screen for some time,” the official said. “His involvement in Sept. 11 became clear for a number of reasons, including information from Abu Zubaydah.”

Zubaydah, in custody in Pakistan, was formerly a key aide to Osama bin Laden and an instrumental field operative in the al-Qaida network. The official said Shaikh Mohammed had helped arrange financing for the Sept. 11 plot, and made money transfers to the hijackers.