I doubt whether GWB is “hiding” any smoking guns that will hurt him seriously in the public’s mind. I think he’s more afraid that an investigation will turn into a public circus, in which Democrats will play the game of “See, he knew what was coming, and he didn’t stop it!”
My sense is, the real problem the Feds faced before 9/11 is the same dilemma they face now: they have WAY too much information, and no way to handle it or process it effectively. They have a million tips and leads and clues, and don’t have the time, manpower or omniscience to determine which are valuable and which are dead ends.
SINCE 9/11, it seems that every week, the Administration is issuing vague, nebulous warnings that scare us, but don’t tell us anything useful. I think this represents an OVERREACTION to 9/11, when the Feds had all kinds of vague, nebulous information, but sat on it because they didn’t know specifically what it meant. Any warnings they might have aired prior to 9/11 would probably have been equally “helpful.”
I fully support the idea of an investigatory committee, because the people have a right to know how well or how badly our government handled investigations of terrorist cells, and what they did with the information they received. But it’s all too clear that many Democrats are viewing this as a Watergate-style affair (hence, phrases like “what did the President know and when did he know it?”). Small wonder GWB has no interest in such nonsense.
But there’s no reason he couldn’t appoint something like the Tower Commission, a bipartisan group of respected officials, who’d be able to tell us where law enforcement and counterintelligence broke down. For the sake of argument, GWB could appoint… say, John McCain, Jimmy Carter, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Nunn and Norman Schwarzkopf, and they could give us all the facts. Most important: did the Feds have clear warnings of specific attacks aimed at specific targets, or did they just have hundreds of memos regarding possible threats to a host of locations?