Force of 9/11 Panel Is Felt

The juggernaut known as the Sept. 11 commission gathered momentum and influence Tuesday as Sen. John F. Kerry called for extending its charter until 2006 and a Senate oversight committee moved up its first hearing on reforming U.S. counterterrorism agencies to later this week.

Campaigning in Norfolk, Va., Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, proposed keeping the independent panel of congressionally appointed commissioners together for at least another 18 months so they can forcefully advocate for their 41 recommendations and issue regular progress reports.

In response, Bush administration officials reiterated that they are accelerating a review of the commission’s 567-page report, which was released Thursday. Several Bush aides said the president and his staff are working to adopt at least some of the commission’s recommendations in August.

Some commission officials questioned whether Kerry’s suggestion was practical. Though panel members plan to tour the country pushing their proposals, the commission’s charter expires Aug. 26, and it wasn’t clear where the money would come from to keep the group intact for so long or whether its members and staff would agree to do so.

But the mere suggestion that a blue-ribbon panel become a semi-permanent part of the landscape demonstrated the surprising political effect the commission has managed to wield since it published its final report last week.

Kerry had immediately embraced the group’s recommendations. After President Bush’s initial lukewarm response, congressional Republicans pushed him to get out in front of a groundswell of public support for the commission’s ideas.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, for instance, showed that more than six in 10 Americans approve of the congressionally established commission’s work.

Meanwhile, commission officials said Tuesday that a paperback version of the report has sold out its first run of 500,000, a second mass printing is underway and “tens of millions” of Americans have reviewed an electronic version of the report on the panel’s website. At least four congressional committees have pledged to hold hearings on the report and its recommendations within the next few weeks.

“It’s extraordinary,” commission executive director Philip D. Zelikow said. “Of course, we’re gratified. And surprised maybe a little. But we had intended all along to write a report that could be put in the hands of the American people and have them read it, and that’s a powerful thing.”

The commission’s widely praised report and the obvious public support for dramatic steps to confront terrorism were grist for Kerry, even as he intoned against politicizing the issue.

“Now that the 9/11 commission has done its job, we need to do our job,” Kerry said Tuesday. “We have a blueprint for action....The only thing we don’t have is time. We need to do it now.”

He added, “It will take real bipartisan leadership and real action to protect this country of ours.”

Analysts said the back-and-forth between the White House and the Kerry campaign underscores how well the bipartisan commission has succeeded in writing an authoritative report during a time of war and an election year.

“We have a good report, and there’s a good chance that we’ll be attacked again, and everyone thinks that,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist. “That puts together a very unique mix of political incentives.”

But some experts warned that those incentives have a downside.

“I think they have to be very careful with what they do lest the fix causes more problems than it solves,” said former Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.), who with former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) co-chaired an earlier blue-ribbon commission that in 2001 called for action to combat a looming terrorist threat -- an appeal that was largely ignored.

“This system wasn’t built overnight and it can’t be restructured overnight. There are political imperatives here, and I am concerned that sometimes things are done too rapidly,” Rudman said. “If you are going to try to do this to convince the public that you’re more concerned than the other guy [about counterterrorism reform], you’re doing it too hastily.”

Yet the political imperatives are hard for the candidates to ignore, said Steven Kull of the University of Maryland.

Bush and Kerry “are basically competing to endorse it, to embrace it and say they’re going to be guided by it more than the other guy is,” Kull said. “They have good reasons to believe the election will ultimately be decided by the guy who can more effectively show that he can deal with the threat of terrorism.”

Zelikow, the commission executive director, said the release of the report just months before the election ultimately will benefit the American public.

“Publication of the report during the campaign obliges both campaigns to take positions on it immediately, and that dynamic is likely to produce action and it is producing action,” Zelikow said. “It’s off to a good start.”

Zelikow also said the commissioners -- five Democrats and five Republicans -- have vowed to studiously avoid comments that could indicate support for Kerry, Bush or candidates in other races as they press for adoption of the commission’s recommendations.

In its report, the commission proposed an exceedingly ambitious reform agenda that called for the overhaul of key elements of U.S. foreign policy as well as a broad restructuring of the nation’s intelligence community.

Many of the recommendations can be implemented by executive order, but some would require legislation, including the creation of the post of director of national intelligence overseeing all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies and the formation of an interagency counterterrorism center -- which Kerry has supported and Bush thus far has not.

The first congressional hearing is set for Friday before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, when commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton will testify on how to implement its long list of reforms. The hearing had been scheduled to start next week, but was changed to accommodate the schedules of Kean and Hamilton.

Zelikow and several other commission officials said it was too early to discuss whether they would -- or even could -- stay on as panel members.

“It’s a flattering proposal, but it’s not one the commission has discussed or is able to act upon,” Zelikow said. “We’re a creature of the law that created us, and that law is expiring.”

Spokesman Al Felzenberg said the commission already has been discussing ways to aggressively lobby Washington and the American public for implementation of its recommendations, and is even considering accepting funds from private sources.

But several senior commission officials said they doubted whether Kerry’s proposal to extend the panel for 18 months would be successful, even if embraced by Congress.

“You would have difficulty holding together the staff” and the commissioners, many of whom are exhausted by the pace of the investigation and eager to return to their careers and families, said one official.

Staff writers Peter Wallsten and Ronald Brownstein in Boston and Maura Reynolds in Crawford, Texas, also contributed. Meyer reported from Washington, Gold from Norfolk.