Bush approves Sept. 11 commission; names Kissinger to chair
President Bush Wednesday signed a bill authorizing intelligence programs and creating a national commission to investigate the events that led up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"This commission will help me and future presidents to understand the methods of America's enemies and the nature of the threats we face," Bush said.
Bush named Henry Kissinger to head the commission. Kissinger served as secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
Later Friday, Democratic congressional leaders named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to be vice chairman of the panel.
The commission will have 10 members, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.
Under the legislation, the commission has 18 months to issue a report on the attacks. Bush urged the commission to finish before that deadline. "After all, if there's changes that need to be made, we need to know them as soon as possible, for the security of our country," he said. "The sooner we have the commission's conclusions, the sooner this administration will act on them."
Earlier this year, the White House had resisted congressional efforts to establish a Sept. 11 commission. But members of Congress, including Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., pressed for legislation to set up a panel to investigate the performance of various federal agencies in the events leading up to Sept. 11.
"The precise mission of this commission [is] to better understand what went wrong so we can prevent such a catastrophic attack from ever happening again," Lieberman said in a statement Wednesday.
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