The commission has spoken

While there is no question that the 9/11 commission did a massive amount of good work, there was an underlying weakness in its approach -- in striving to reach a bipartisan consensus it kept its criticism of the government generic and anecdotal. While it described failures of both the Clinton and Bush administrations in policy and approach toward the threat of terrorism in the years and months leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, the report did not fault any individuals for specific errors.
That, perhaps, is inevitable, in the political climate of Washington. Still, the statement by Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, came across as weak. "There's no single individual who is responsible for our failures," he said Thursday. "Yet individuals and institutions cannot be absolved of responsibility. Any person in a senior position within our government during this time bears some element of responsibility for our government's actions."
The commission should have found a way to rise above this you know who you are approach to assigning responsibility. In its attempt to be evenhanded, the commission has only assured an almost endless stream of partisan readings of its report, with Democrats seizing on a statement here and Republicans adopting an anecdote there in attempts to lay the blame at the foot of the opposition.
That kind of sniping is bound to take place in the media and on the campaign trail, but we hope it can be kept outside the hearing rooms of Congress when both houses take up the need for a legislative response to the 9/11 report next month.
Show care in creating a czar
We also hope that Congress finds an alternative to what we believe is the commission's most dangerously flawed recommendation, creation of a Cabinet-level head of a counterterrorism office in the White House.
If the 15 bureaus and offices collecting intelligence are all to be coordinated by an unelected official, that official should be more insulated from partisan politics than a Cabinet member would be.
If there is to be such a czar, he or she should be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but should have more independence than a Cabinet member. The FBI and CIA directors are appointed, but their tenure is understood to extend from one administration to another, regardless of who is sitting in the White House and regardless of the president's political affiliation.
Gathering intelligence and protecting the American people should be a nonpartisan effort. The more partisan it becomes, the less safe we are.