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1/Today is a good day to reflect on how different the aftermath of Russia's attack on the US in 2016 has been to what happened after 9/11. Most importantly, Congress established an independent commission to look into the attack, report on what happened and make recommendations.
2/The 9/11 Commission held 12 public hearings over two years, making its work public from the outset. These public hearings included public testimony from senior govt officials. The President, VP and former Pres Clinton testified in private. c-span.org/video/?182320-…
3/The Commissioners spoke to the media and public throughout the process, and for years afterwards. The two top Commissioners even wrote a book about their experience 👇amazon.com/Without-Preced… It was all very out there.
4/Was no attempt to by anyone to interfere w/the Commission process or their findings. In fact, "Months after the commission had officially issued its report... Chairman Kean and other commissioners toured the country to draw attention to the recommendations of the commission."
5/After the IC made its findings known in early 2017, Democrats made clear they wanted to establish a 9/11 style commission to look at Russia's attack on the US. reuters.com/article/us-usa… The decision to establish the opaque Mueller process instead was made by Rs w/no Dem input.
6/So instead of broad public discussion abt Russia's attack, what it means, how to prevent future ones etc we get Barr, redactions, burying of Mueller, opacity, lack of consensus on what even happened. It has left us unprepared, unready. Mismanagement by Rs historic, dangerous.
7/So this morning we hear from Mueller, 2 months after his report comes out. Is welcome I guess. But the contrast between how our nation handled 9/11 and 2016 Russia is just staggering, and one of the great betrayals of our national interests by a political party in our history.
8/We'll learn in coming months why design of the investigation was so narrow, so focused on Trump and criminality and not on Russia, prevention. Whatever we learn, critical House hold hearings abt Russia, the attack, future prevention and make them big. We need to air it all out.
