A Closer Look
…almost certainly, a distinguished bipartisan commission will be convened to examine the conditions that led to the catastrophe of Sept. 11.

The Bush administration doesn't want this. And Republicans in Congress are fighting to prevent it. But it will happen.

The American public remains largely in the dark about the terrorist threat that is still out there, and the nation's preparedness to deal with it. The periodic terror-related announcements by top Bush administration officials often seem calculated not to educate or to illuminate, but rather to frighten the public and intimidate the political opposition.

That is not acceptable in a free society. Despite the preferences of the administration, which likes to operate behind closed doors with the windows shut and the shades drawn, the public has a right to more information, not less. A thoroughly independent, non-Congressional inquiry is essential.

And that sentiment was poignantly expressed this week by a group of women whose husbands were lost in the World Trade Center attack. They traveled to Washington for a round of meetings and demonstrations in an effort to build support for an independent investigation. "It's not about politics," said one of the women, Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J. "It's about doing the right thing. It's about the safety of the nation."

Part of the problem has been the success the administration has had in managing the news and keeping fears of terror at a heightened pitch. Every time serious criticism of the nation's preparedness begins to emerge, the administration tries to trump it with some terror warning or some big new antiterror initiative.

Gone are the days when a Franklin Roosevelt would try to defuse an economic panic by cautioning a nation against the fear of fear itself. Or when a Winston Churchill would rally a war-stricken nation by proclaiming, "We shall not flag or fail."

Instead we have Dick Cheney on "Meet the Press" saying another attack on the U.S. by Al Qaeda is "almost certain." And we have the director of the F.B.I., Robert Mueller, telling a gathering of district attorneys that suicide bombings like those in Israel are "inevitable" on American soil.

It's a peculiar leadership strategy that depends for its success on routinely scaring the heck out of the population.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/opinion/13HERB.html