The next blue-ribbon investigative commission that Washington needs, no doubt, is a commission to investigate the mistakes made by the commission investigating the mistakes leading to the attacks of September 11. When the 9/11-investigation investigation convenes, it might consider these recommendations for the next high-power post-mortem:
1) No public hearings. All interviews should be conducted in private, with transcripts made but sealed for some period to be decided by the commission, and for a year or two at least.
2) Informants' confidentiality should be protected. Sources can be listed, but who said what should be off-limits until documents are unsealed.
3) No sworn testimony.
4) Only the commission chair and vice chair should speak to the media, and then only on matters of process. Other commission members should take a vow of silence during the investigation.
5) The report should require the approval of three-fourths of the commission members, with no minority opinions to be issued.
The first thing you may notice about these rules is that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, as the 9/11 commission is formally called, has not followed them. Instead, the commission has been very public and very talkative, in keeping with the demands of 9/11 family members and other groups that regard themselves as the commission's constituency. In February, for instance, the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission insisted on "public hearings on all topics," because public hearings "educate and inform the American public"; called for subpoenas to gain access to presidential intelligence briefs; and demanded that "all high-ranking officials with information relevant to 9/11 should be required to testify and should do so under oath, whether testifying in public or in private."
In other words, the 9/11 commission should look like the congressional Watergate hearings, or the hearings on President Clinton's impeachment. That type of hearing has become the modern Washington model for high-profile investigations. Commission members love it, because it puts them in the limelight. But it is the wrong model for 9/11.
Unlike the Watergate and Clinton investigations, the 9/11 commission's most important job is not to fix blame for past wrongdoing but to identify and correct continuing problems. If the commission does not make another 9/11 less likely, it is not worth having. Probing a sitting administration for flaws in its policies requires a certain amount of delicacy. Which has not been the commission's strong suit.
On April 4, the two leaders of the commission took to NBC's Meet the Press to declare that the September 11 attacks could probably have been prevented. As Arte Johnson used to say, "Very interesting...but stupid." Question: Why were these guys sharing their personal, and very debatable, opinions on the subject of their investigation, weeks before their commission was ready to report? Were they appointed to investigate or to pontificate?
The commission clearly needed to hear from Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. But why become embroiled in a weeks-long spitting contest with the White House over demands that she testify in public and under oath? Rice had already testified for four hours in private and was willing to testify privately some more.
Commission members said, according to The Washington Post, they were "anxious to get her public testimony regarding discrepancies between White House statements" and assertions made by Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism director. Nailing officials on discrepancies sounds more like Kenneth Starr's line of work than the 9/11 commission's. If the commission wanted Rice's candid analysis, rather than a scripted speech, deposing her on national TV was not the way to get it.
When she finally did testify, her remarks predictably yielded no substantive revelations—just defensive posturing and grist for the next hunt for discrepancies, this time between conflicting descriptions of an intelligence memo of August 6, 2001. As the White House scrambled to declassify that memo, it also got busy launching what The New York Times called "an unusual pre-emptive strike"—not against Al Qaeda or the Iraqi insurgency but against Democrats on the 9/11 commission.
The time and attention of Washington's top policy makers is Washington's most precious commodity. According to news reports, Rice and her staff spent hours preparing her public testimony: briefing her, assembling timelines, "war-gaming" likely questions. Each of those hours was an hour not spent on national security. Meanwhile, an armed uprising—the most dangerous yet—was erupting across Iraq.
Maybe Rice's diverted hours didn't matter. Sometimes, though, when policy makers take their eye off the ball, bad guys kick it. In 1998, Saddam Hussein took advantage of President Clinton's impeachment distraction to throw weapons inspectors out of Iraq, and that same distraction may have impeded an effective U.S. response. If not for Kenneth Starr— who knows?—America might not today be in Iraq.
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