That is pure conjecture, of course. Take it or leave it. What is not conjectural, however, is that distractions in time of crisis do not help. And Washington could not have chosen a worse moment than now for a paroxysm of finger-pointing. "Our focus has been on 9/11—who did what and who didn't," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., told ABC's This Week. "But it ought to be on June 30," the date when sovereignty is supposed to be transferred in Iraq.
Economists speak of transaction costs. Washington needs to master the concept of investigation costs. A government saddled with a high-profile probe is a government less focused on other tasks, and wartime is the worst time for distractions. That was why the Pearl Harbor investigation went to work after, not during, World War II.
The war on terror is not going to end anytime soon, and the country cannot wait to learn how to reduce its vulnerability. So it makes sense to investigate 9/11, and to investigate before the trail gets cold. But do it right. Much of the descent into recriminations and damage control was avoidable. A shrewder 9/11 commission would have turned its back on demands for public hearings, swearings-in, and the rest of the Watergate-style apparatus. Instead, it would have stressed:
• Discretion. Partisanship is inevitable in Washington. Instead of complaining about it, the commission should have planned for it and taken care to avoid making public comments that might fan the flames. The partisan snipers are out there, but it does no good to give them ammunition. And any administration, Republican or Democratic, will treat as a threat a commission whose members are holding forth as Sunday-morning pundits and competing for quotes in The New York Times.
• Confidentiality. This is especially important if the commission hopes to solve problems rather than point fingers. Backward-looking, punitive investigations use high-wattage publicity and legal jackhammers to penetrate stone walls and cover-ups. But a forward-looking, problem-solving investigation needs to foster a climate in which officials can be self-critical without undue fear of being prosecuted or keelhauled. Putting witnesses under oath induces them to weigh every word with lawyerly care rather than freely volunteer information. And public testimony sends everybody into blame-deflecting and political-maneuvering mode. Confidential, unsworn testimony may not explore every discrepancy or mine every document, but it elicits more self-criticism and candor.
• Nonpartisanship. Just because Washington is a partisan place, that doesn't mean every investigation needs to be. Merely ratcheting down the inquiry's profile and zipping partisan mouths on the commission can help. Requiring a single, bipartisan report can help even more, by giving commission members an incentive to seek common ground. The commission's report will and should be injected into partisan debate—and if the report is a bombshell, so much the better—but having five Democrats and five Republicans publicly grill witnesses irresistibly invites partisan posturing. You may say it is naive to hope for a quiet investigation of so contentious a topic. You would be right. But a smart and responsible inquiry can minimize, rather than aggravate, conflict and collateral damage. Even in today's Washington, quiet, forward-looking, nonpartisan, nonprosecutorial investigations go on all the time, producing invaluable knowledge at modest cost, and often on controversial subjects. The 9/11 commission, or whatever mega-investigation comes next, should go take lessons at 441 G St. NW. There they'll find the General Accounting Office.
My column will be taking some time off in April and May while I'm on tour with my new book, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America—which I hope you'll check out.
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