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NEW YORK — Airlines and aviation-related companies sued the CIA and the FBI on Tuesday to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The two lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Manhattan sought court orders for depositions as the aviation entities build their defenses against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to Sept. 11, 2001.

The aviation companies said the agencies refused to let them depose two secret agents, including the 2001 head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, and six FBI agents with key information about al-Qaida and bin Laden.

The airlines, airport authorities, security companies and an aircraft manufacturer said they were entitled to present evidence to show the terrorist attacks did not depend upon negligence by any aviation defendants and that there were other causes of the attacks.

They said that the depositions were likely to result in evidence showing the terrorists were sophisticated, well-financed and would have succeeded regardless of any action by the aviation entities.

"The aviation parties are entitled to show that operations conducted by the federal intelligence agencies were the most effective way to uncover and stop the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and that the inability of the federal intelligence agencies to detect and stop the plot is a more causal circumstance of the terrorist attacks than any allegedly negligent conduct of the aviation parties," the FBI lawsuit said.

In the CIA lawsuit, companies including American Airlines owner AMR Corp., United Airlines' UAL Corp., US Airways Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Continental Airlines Inc. and Boeing Co. asked to interview the deputy chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit in 2001 and an FBI agent assigned to the unit at that time. The names of both are secret.

In the FBI suit, the companies asked to interview five former and current FBI employees who participated in investigations of al-Qaida and al-Qaida operatives before and after Sept. 11.

Those individuals included Coleen M. Rowley, the former top FBI lawyer in its Minneapolis office, who sent a scathing letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in May 2002 complaining that a supervisor in Washington interfered with the Minnesota investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.