Philip Shenon, a former Washington and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, is author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination and The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.

The special prosecutor’s work is over. Now is it time for a commission?

With the announcement Friday that Robert Mueller has completed his nearly two-year investigation into whether President Donald Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia, much of Washington is beside itself with anticipation as Attorney General William Barr reviews Mueller’s findings. But whatever might be in the Mueller report—and no matter how thorough of a job the special counsel might have done—his investigation will not put an end to the great national security threat revealed in the 2016 election: the possibility that a foreign power is determining the outcome of American elections and will meddle again when voters choose a president next year. Senior federal law enforcement and intelligence officials agree the threat of foreign meddling remains dire—and that it is perhaps as serious as any that has confronted American democracy in their lifetimes.


That explains the need for Congress to consider establishing an independent, bipartisan blue-ribbon commission to pick up where Mueller left off. Mueller was not asked to offer systematic solutions to the danger of foreign election interference. Torn by partisanship, Congress seems unable to deal with the issue itself. But there could be enough agreement in Congress to muster support for legislation to create a commission, likely modeled on the 9/11 commission, to look for concrete solutions to the threat of election meddling. Unlike Mueller, the commission could be given the important assignment of educating the public about what happened in 2016 and resolving whatever questions Mueller leaves unaddressed in his still-secret report. The 9/11 commission’s final report in 2004, after all, was hailed for its gripping, easy-to-understand narrative of the 2001 terrorist attacks and of the rise of global terrorist networks.

In 2017, during the frenzied days after Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was House minority leader at the time, and Congressman Adam Schiff of California, then ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and now its chairman, called for an independent bipartisan commission to investigate foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential election. But the idea was quietly shelved. Democrats appeared to agree then on the more urgent need for a special counsel—with subpoena power and the ability to bring criminal charges—to get to work, especially if there were any possibility that Russia was controlling the actions of a newly elected American president. Plus, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, so Pelosi and her deputies had no ability to insist on much of anything.

Now, though, Mueller’s investigation is over; the Democrats are in charge in the House. And the Russia threat looms. The nation’s principal intelligence and law enforcement agencies have agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, with the intention of electing Trump, and that Moscow is continuing to meddle. Because of partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill, Congress has not ordered sweeping changes in election security procedures. The Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for protecting the integrity of balloting nationwide, was criticized by its inspector general just last month for having failed to organize a “well-coordinated approach to securing the nation’s election infrastructure.”

The 9/11 commission is the most natural model for a potential commission to investigate foreign election meddling. Unlike the Warren Commission, which investigated the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and failed to resolve central mysteries around his death, the 9/11 commission offered a final report that was widely accepted by the public. Its central recommendation was the creation of a new Cabinet-level post—director of national intelligence—to force intelligence and law enforcement agencies to cooperate in responding to terrorist threats and other national security dangers. Since the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in 2005, there have been sharply different appraisals of its performance, with critics arguing that it duplicates the work of other agencies. But the post may have demonstrated its importance once and for all under the current director, Dan Coats, a Republican former senator named by Trump. He is seen by members of both parties as a valuable independent voice on intelligence issues and has often been the face of public warnings about the threat of Russian election meddling—sometimes to Trump’s annoyance.

Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska who was a member of the 9/11 commission, told me he believes a similar independent commission is needed in light of the threat of more election interference by Russia and other foreign powers—and of how many Americans remain ignorant of the danger. “You have an authoritarian government that has interfered in our democracy and is continuing to interfere, and I don’t think enough Americans understand that,” he said in an interview.

Kerrey said the commission’s leaders should be as prominent as possible to demonstrate the issue’s importance. He offered the names of two high-profile candidates to lead the panel: former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “They’re the names I think of,” Kerrey said. “However you structure this, you need to show the public that this is above politics.” He noted that, in his service on the 9/11 commission, he insisted behind-the-scenes that the panel issue a unanimous report and that there be no dissent of any kind, even though there were often sharp partisan differences between the panel’s five Democrats and five Republicans. “I insisted: no minority reports,” he said. “I feel pride about that.”

The selection of former presidents to lead such a bipartisan commission has a modern precedent. After the disputed 2000 presidential election between Bush and Vice President Al Gore, former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter led a federal commission on election-law reform that recommended an overhaul of election and voter-registration procedures across the country. The original chairman of the 9/11 commission was equally high-profile: Henry Kissinger, though he quickly stepped aside and was replaced by former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, a moderate Republican who championed bipartisanship in the investigation.

A Republican member of the 9/11 commission, John Lehman, who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, said he would also endorse the creation of a new 9/11-style commission, but only if it had a mandate that went beyond election meddling and took on even larger national security threats related to cybersecurity and disinformation. Foreign meddling in U.S. elections “is indeed a serious problem, but it is a subset of the far broader cyber/disinformation assault on all infrastructure,” Lehman said, noting the potential for a foreign power to shut down the U.S. power grid or internet.

The idea of a commission would almost certainly face opposition from congressional Republicans, including many in the House who have insisted that the Russia threat is overblown or even nonexistent. It also seems more than likely that Trump would oppose congressional legislation to create an independent commission. But there was similar Republican opposition to creation of the 9/11 commission, including from Bush and his deputies, who warned that the work would distract from the government’s effort to prevent another terrorist attack. The GOP’s opposition was overcome in the face of growing bipartisan momentum for some sort of independent investigation into whether bungling by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, as well as by the Bush White House, had allowed terrorists to strike on 9/11.

Trump, in fact, might take some comfort from the history of the 9/11 commission and the way it was structured by Congress. Under legislation creating the panel, Bush was able to choose the 9/11 commission’s chairman—first Kissinger, then Kean. Congressional Republican leaders chose the other four Republican members. House and Senate Democratic leaders chose the panel’s five Democrats.

And while the Bush White House clearly feared that the 9/11 commission would hold individual Bush administration officials accountable for pre-9/11 intelligence errors, the commission’s leaders announced publicly at the start of the investigation in 2003 that there would be no finger-pointing against individuals. The panel’s report revealed catastrophic bungling at the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and the White House before 9/11, but no individuals were blamed, at least not by name. As a result, no senior government officials were ever disciplined or fired as a direct result of their actions before or after 9/11. Some of them, in fact, won promotions to even more powerful jobs.

Ultimately, Bush welcomed the findings of the commission he had once opposed and thanked the panel for “learning about went wrong prior to September 11 and making very solid, sound recommendations about how to move forward.”