Congress OKs 9/11 Special Commission
Congress OKs 9/11 special commission
'We are excited we have a deal'
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLI...ss.commission/
From Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau
Friday, November 15, 2002 Posted: 5:55 PM EST (2255 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Congress approved legislation Friday creating a special, independent commission to investigate apparent intelligence weaknesses and other government agency failures preceding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
A Senate voice vote followed House approval, 366-3, early Friday morning. The measure was attached to an intelligence authorization bill for 2003 and next goes to President Bush for his signature.
"We are confident. We are excited we have a deal -- bipartisan support for the creation of a 9/11 commission," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said before the votes.
Power sharing
The 10-person commission is to be made up of five Republicans and five Democrats, according to congressional aides.
The chairman is to be appointed by the Bush administration and the vice chairman chosen by Democrats.
Democrats had originally wanted co-chairmen from each party, but conceded to the White House on that issue.
The panel is to begin work quickly and its work is to last 18 months. That's another concession to the White House, which wanted a final report well before the 2004 presidential elections.
Another issue Democrats gave in on: the commission's subpoena power. According to congressional aides, the panel can issue a subpoena if a majority of members agree it's warranted, or if both the chairman and vice chairman concur.
"Democrats agreed to this because the bottom line is if there was no agreement, the White House was threatening to create the commission by executive order," said a Democratic congressional aide. Democrats said that would have given Republicans more of a chance to stack the deck against a fair probe.
The idea for the panel was proposed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Connecticut and John McCain, R-Arizona, and Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Indiana, soon after last year's attacks. They were rebuffed by the White House, which said it preferred to let a select intelligence committee handle the probe into why the country was ill-prepared for the attacks.
Sen. John McCain, with Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Tim Roemer, is co-author of the measure to create the commission.
But that investigation encountered problems gathering information from key agencies, and momentum started to build for a special commission.
Bush then reversed his position and endorsed the idea in the fall.
The breadth of the commission's investigation is to be determined by its members. Most backers want it to look into failures not only by the intelligence community, but also by agencies like the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs and Border Patrol and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had criticized the administration earlier Thursday for taking the commission measure out of the homeland security bill. (Full story)
He cited the urgency of creating a panel, especially in light of potential new threats from al Qaeda.
"If we can't even figure out how it was that they enacted the threats or moved through that attack, and if we can't evaluate why we were as vulnerable as we were -- if we can't evaluate how it was the last 9/11 happened -- how is it that we can prepare for the next one?" asked Daschle, D-South Dakota.[B]
