9/11 commission leaders join calls for riot probe

Seek to help fully investigate Jan. 6 siege on Capitol

With the second acquittal of former president Donald Trump by the Senate, the two leaders of the commission that examined the 9/11 attacks are looking ahead to the next possible chapter, lending their influence to calls for a commission with a mandate to investigate fully the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

As the impeachment trial was proceeding Friday, Tom Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic House member from Indiana, sent a letter to President Joe Biden and to the bipartisan leaders in the House and Senate urging the establishment of a commission that would be both independent and bipartisan. That alone points to the challenges such a commission would face.

In the letter, the two wrote, “The shocking and tragic assault of Jan. 6th on the U.S. Capitol requires thorough investigation, to ensure that the American people learn the truth of what happened that day. An investigation should establish a single narrative and set of facts to identify how the Capitol was left vulnerable, as well as corrective actions to make the institution safe again.”

Neither Kean nor Hamilton sought to make a direct comparison with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and those of Jan. 6. But as Kean put it in an interview: The Capitol attack “was a wound to democracy itself . . . . If the people we elect cannot be safe when they’re trying to do their work, then the country’s in trouble and will remain in trouble, and we’ve got to therefore get to the bottom of it.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D -Calif., already has raised the idea of creating such a commission, as have some other members of Congress. Kean and Hamilton said that each had received a call from the speaker on Friday, following up on their letter and plumbing their expertise. But is there the will in Congress as a whole to go ahead with such an investigation after the Senate trial?

In their letter, sent under the auspices of the

Bipartisan Policy Commission, Kean and Hamilton acknowledged that it is the role and responsibility of Congress to decide whether to establish such a commission and how to structure it. They did not mention the name of Trump or note that it was his followers who invaded the Capitol after having been called to Washington after being “fed lies” for weeks about a stolen election, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., put it last month.

But there is no question that any such commission would inevitably be confronted by the causes of this act of domestic terrorism, of insurrection, and presumably how Trump empowered those who put the lives of lawmakers and Capitol Hill staff in danger.

In an interview, neither Kean nor Hamilton directly addressed whether a new commission examining what happened on

Jan. 6 could avoid dealing with the former president’s role. Instead, they said the key to a successful investigation begins with selection of the right people, both as commission members and as the commission staff, to lead it.

“(You) want to avoid the trap of partisanship,” Hamilton said. “You want to make sure you appoint high-quality people who have the good of the country at heart, are serious about it and honest about it, people with integrity who will examine the facts and not be swayed by ideology or partisanship.”

Both acknowledged that any commission appointed to investigate the attacks on the Capitol would be doing so in a far different environment than existed when they did their work. The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, rallied the country in unity against international terrorism. Not so the attacks on the Capitol.

“I think it’s more difficult,” Kean said, “not only because of the former president but because the time is different. It’s very hard to get people to talk about politics in a way that gives decent respect to points of view on all sides.”

Hamilton added, “The time is one of very acute, intense partisanship and that makes any investigation more difficult. But they (commission members and staff ) simply have to shut that out as much as they possibly can.”

The first goal of any such commission, they said, is to establish the facts of what happened that day, to set out a thorough timeline of events based on exhaustive investigation of all the evidence. “Once you get the report right, the recommendations come spilling right out of the report,” Kean said. “Every single recommendation we made was based on a fact we found in our report.”

To be able to establish facts and a timeline, Hamilton and Kean wrote, a commission should have wide-ranging “authority, through subpoena power, to interview witnesses and review all documents, videos, communications and computer media it requires.”

The two leaders of the 9/11 commission know from their own experience the many obstacles any future commission will face, particularly those of time and resources. Both said attempting to set a deadline for completion of a report at the start of the work would be a mistake. “You take the time you need and if you don’t have that time available, and if they’re not going to give you the time you think is necessary, then just don’t do it,” Hamilton said.

“We found out pretty early in our case we needed more time and that we didn’t have enough money,” Kean said. The two had to plead with Congress for ample resources and the time to complete their work. “If they had not (agreed), it would not have been the quality report it was,” he added.

If the 9/11 commission is a guide, Congress would appoint commission members and the president would name the chair. That commission eventually included a staff of roughly 70 people and the work took a year and a half to complete.

Kean and Hamilton suggested another the a new commission could also examine ways to strengthen Congress itself, through reforms that would build public trust and that would give Congress greater capacity to address the country’s problems.

“Our country has been wounded,” Kean and Hamilton said in their letter to the leaders. “A full accounting of the events of Jan. 6th and the identification of measures to strengthen the Congress can help our country heal.”