Put the 9/11 Commission Behind Closed Doors or Disband It

Scott B. Kelly

After listening to NAS Condi Rice’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission last week – and the sometimes hysterical attacks from the Democrat members – I was reminded of a similar commission from an earlier war.

Shortly after the Union defeat at Ball’s Bluff, Va., in the fall of 1861, Congress established the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. This group’s Congressional mandate included oversight of military affairs, an area in which they proved spectacularly incompetent. The committee’s real aim was to prosecute the war vigorously and punish the South. They were often a thorn in Lincoln’s side, and despite the corruption they uncovered, committee members hurt the Union cause far more than they helped it.

That’s the same impression I got while listening to 9/11 commission members grandstand last week while a dedicated public servant explained what happened before and after 9/11.

Most of the questions from Democrat members were “gotcha” type questions designed to trip Rice and play for the cameras. Former Sen. Bob Kerrey went off on an unhelpful rant – there’s no other fitting word – about Iraq, quite in contrast to his encouraging op-ed that appeared that same morning in the Wall Street Journal.

Worst of the lot was Democrat attack dog Richard Ben Veniste, who seems to love beating up on women. OK, so that’s harsh, but so was his offensive prosecutor act, which surely made the enemies of the United States smile.

Republican members were somewhat better, but Dr. Rice held her own against all of them.

This week’s show was no better, as it became clear that Democratic commission member Jamie Gorelick should have been a witness and not a panel member. Gorelick was the No. 2 at Justice during part of the Clinton years, and a strong proponent of “the wall” of separation between the FBI and the CIA. Preventing the FBI and CIA from sharing and coordinating intelligence is one of the two key factors as to why 9/11 wasn’t stopped (the other being the now-obvious failure of the Clinton law enforcement approach to fighting terror).

Overall, this commission isn’t helping the nation. In fact, it’s damaging – damaging to the country, damaging to us abroad, and is giving aid and comfort to the enemy by dividing us when we should be united.

Like the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, the 9/11 Commission is hurting the war effort. If the commission had just stayed behind closed doors, we wouldn’t be having this discussion and when the commission makes its report in July, it would truly appear to be a bipartisan document.

But that won’t happen now, thanks to the media making a darling of Richard Clarke and commission members’ thirst for the public spotlight. This commission is hotly divided, and any recommendations they make will now be automatically suspicious because they’ve now been irreversibly tainted by political grandstanding.

Let the commission figure out what went wrong and then make their recommendations to the President and Congress. But turn off the cameras and put away the attack dogs. Do it in private instead of making a mockery of national security for the purpose of short-term political gain.

Or just disband the blasted thing and start over.


Scott B. Kelly is a professional writer and former city editor from St. Louis.

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