Posted on 05/23/2002 5:59:58 AM PDT by spald
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Let Congress Do It
It seems a quaint concept now, but once upon a time the U.S. Congress was willing and able to conduct a responsible investigation. Sometimes it has even committed public service, for example, in the Keating Five probe in the early 1990s and going as far back as exploring what signals were missed leading up to Pearl Harbor.
So it's passing strange that so many Members now want to pawn off their Constitutional oversight duty to an "independent commission" to probe the intelligence and security failures leading up to September 11. Senate Leader Tom Daschle may call for a floor vote passing the buck as early as today, while John McCain once again leads the herd of independent media minds. Don't the Members trust each other to do their jobs?
Maybe it's time they did. Some of them already are, namely the 35 members of the bipartisan House and Senate Intelligence Committees. For some time now they've been working on a joint probe that allows intelligence and Administration officials to testify before only one set of investigators. They've already received nearly 15,000 documents and interviewed 184 officials.
With a war still on, these officials have real jobs to do, in particular trying to prevent the next terror attack. An independent commission would inevitably duplicate the Intelligence probe and command valuable executive time. As for Mr. Daschle's claim that an independent probe would lead to more "public scrutiny" and "public involvement," he knows intelligence is classified. Any blue-ribbon commission would have to do the bulk of its work in secret, and if it didn't it would compromise current sources and methods.
We don't oppose an independent commission in theory. But the question is what this one might accomplish that a Congressional probe could not. It's true that Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts led an independent investigation into Pearl Harbor, but it was probably redundant to Congress's comprehensive effort.
In the preface to her definitive 1962 book on Pearl Harbor, Roberta Wohlstetter wrote that, "This study is primarily based on the thirty-nine volumes of the Congressional Hearings on the Pearl Harbor attack, published in 1946; on memoirs published since 1941 by both Japanese and American statesmen and military leaders; and on secondary accounts by historians."
An independent probe might be warranted to avoid a partisan meltdown, except that commissions can get partisan too. Its members would be appointed in part by Congressional leaders, and there's no guarantee those choices would be any more responsible than Members of Congress.
It's notable that one of the loudest advocates for an "independent" probe now is the Democratic National Committee. We doubt DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe has been seized with a bout of statesmanship. More likely he views a commission as an opportunity for his potential Presidential candidates to get some TV credentialing.
The Intelligence Committee chairmen, by contrast, aren't grandstanders from central Congressional casting. GOP Representative Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham both hail from Florida and they even like each other. The ranking Senate Republican, Alabama's Richard Shelby, will also be on hand with his well-known skepticism toward CIA Director George Tenet and the intelligence establishment. His views will be a useful counter to whatever sympathies Mr. Goss has for the CIA he used to work for.
Rounding out the committee leadership is California Representative Nancy Pelosi; she's a partisan but also a grown-up, and as a Member of the Democratic leadership ought to reassure liberals who always suspect a cover-up. Mr. Goss, by the way, was one of the Republicans on the House Ethics Committee when it reprimanded former Speaker Newt Gingrich. He isn't the sort to give his own party a free pass.
Maybe Congress will live down to media expectations. But why not give it a chance? The nation's hard experience with the late, unlamented independent prosecutor law suggests that oversight duties belong in Congress. When Members are able to pass that buck to someone else, they often also abandon any self-restraint. Congress is likely to be more responsible if it plays the check-and-balancing role that the Founders designed for it.
Updated May 23, 2002
Perhaps the Rpublicans should embrace the idea of an investigation, take the ball and run. I'm willing to bet that the DNC knows what an investigation will find and will do all they can to shut it down or stall it.
The DNC doesn't really want an investigation, they just want to try to make Bush look like he doesn't wnat one.
When has a congressional investigation ever forced the resignation and prosecution of key cabinet positions that oversee a fiasco? Rarely do they ever go to the top even when the evidence is conclusive. I say keep the good ol boys out of the so called investigation. They need to focus on fixing the problems rather than living in the past and placing blame for the sake of politics.
WOW! You're a political gooroo!
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