Outsiders May Have the Best Seats to Spot Pre-9/11 Failures

As Washington fast-forwards to frenzy over the accumulating evidence of missed clues in the weeks before Sept. 11, the odds are growing that a much broader investigation will be launched into the attacks--and what else, if anything, the government could have done to prevent them.

But it’s an open question what sort of investigation has the greatest chance of excavating the truth, designing useful reforms and generating enough momentum to force those changes into law without devolving into a political shoot-out.

So far, only the House and Senate Intelligence committees are investigating the government’s performance. And that inquiry has been relatively narrow--probably too narrow to resolve the questions about possible missteps not only under President Bush but President Clinton, and even other administrations.

The White House is understandably leery of an open-ended, highly partisan investigation that could distract and demoralize the very officials charged with preventing another attack; after the bitter experiences of the Clinton years, when Republicans used the congressional investigative power more like a bludgeon than a searchlight, Democrats should also be hesitant about entangling another president, Gulliver-like, in subpoenas and depositions.

But Vice President Dick Cheney has gone too far in suggesting that this new wave of questions is “thoroughly irresponsible ... in time of war,” as he put it last week. When the FBI fails to connect warnings from its Phoenix office that terrorists might be training at U.S. flight schools with the arrest of a possible terrorist at a Minnesota flight school-- and when no one connects either of those red flags with CIA warnings to Bush last August about Al Qaeda interest in plane hijackings--surely someone needs to be asking what went wrong.

In an echo of Watergate, some were already asking last week: What did the president know and when did he know it? But that’s a silly question: Does anyone doubt that Bush--or any other American president--wouldn’t have taken every conceivable step to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks if he was presented a clear picture of the danger? The more relevant issue is why didn’t the president receive such a picture: In other words, what didn’t the president know and why didn’t he know it?

Broadly speaking, precedent offers three ways the White House and Congress might answer that question.

One is an administration self-examination. After the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, President Reagan convened an internal panel to unearth what went wrong; Clinton officials used the same model after several terrorist attacks during his presidency.

Bush hasn’t established anything comparable after Sept. 11, but this approach has its merits. These internal commissions work quietly and privately, usually free of political grandstanding. But in this case such a commission is unlikely to produce intelligence and law enforcement reforms as bold as many are now seeking.

Donald Kettl, an expert on government performance at the University of Wisconsin, notes the risk isn’t only that an internal task force will be too defensive in assessing blame, but that it would be too invested “in the existing system” to see the gaps terrorists can exploit. That, he says, may take the fresh eyes “an outside perspective” brings.

Nor would an internal commission attract the public attention that would be focused on an outside investigation. And if the public isn’t engaged, the intelligence and law enforcement agencies are more likely to fight off big changes.

The surest way to generate public pressure would be a high-profile congressional investigation, presumably much broader in scope than the intelligence committees’ focus on the CIA and FBI. Senate Democrats are mulling that idea now. Such congressional hearings would probably rivet public attention and create momentum for serious reform. Congressional investigations also have the advantage of involving legislators who have the direct authority to translate their findings into law.

But this approach has potentially crippling drawbacks. It would increase the risk of leaks of sensitive information. And it would virtually assure political warfare over every step of the process. “In the current climate of Congress, it is almost certain to be highly charged,” says former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana, who served on the congressional committee that investigated Iran-Contra under Reagan. That conflict could not only complicate the investigation, but fatally discredit its findings by branding them as partisan--which is exactly what happened to most congressional GOP investigations of Clinton.

Hamilton prefers the third option: an independent commission of outsiders. At their best, independent commissions can combine the key assets of the other two alternatives. Like congressional investigations, they bring a skeptical outside eye to the problem; but like the internal studies, they usually reduce partisanship.

Over the last half century, some of these independent commissions have generated real results. Two commissions chaired by former President Herbert Hoover inspired significant government restructurings under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1983, an Alan Greenspan-led commission pushed into law sweeping changes in Social Security. More often, though, these commission reports sit unopened, like the farsighted study on terrorism that former Sens. Gary Hart and Warren B. Rudman (along with Hamilton and a panel of other notables) produced to little notice last winter.

This history suggests--somewhat paradoxically--that outside commissions usually matter only when the insiders (primarily the president and congressional leadership) are invested in them. Which is why Bush might want to ask for one now. An internal investigation is too unlikely to resolve all the questions swirling around him (or give him the leverage he needs for major change); a congressional inquiry is too likely to degenerate into political warfare.

There’s no guarantee that a bipartisan independent commission--of the sort Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) are pushing--will generate more light than heat. But amid a series of imperfect alternatives, an independent commission may offer the most answers with the least acrimony--especially if Bush comes to see it as a tool, not a threat.