WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday named Henry A. Kissinger, a Republican who has been one of the most respected but polarizing figures in foreign policy and Washington for more than three decades, to lead an independent investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Bush made the appointment as he signed legislation creating the commission, a step he came to support after opposing the bill for much of the year on the ground that it could divert attention from the war on terrorism.
Democratic leaders in Congress, who will appoint half of the commission's 10 members, immediately named George J. Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader and peace envoy to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, as vice chairman.
The commission is required to complete its work within 18 months -- a timetable that would have it issue its final report in the middle of a presidential election year -- though Bush said he hoped it would finish sooner. Democratic and Republican congressional leaders must appoint the rest of the members by Dec. 15.
The commission will have the power to issue subpoenas by majority vote, and lawmakers have urged that it cast its net widely and interview current and former government officials, including Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
The president cited Kissinger's long experience in and out of government, including his service as secretary of state under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, in putting him in charge of an inquiry intended to explore how failures in intelligence, immigration controls, law enforcement and foreign policy might have contributed to the deaths of more than 3,000 people in the terrorist attacks.
"His investigation should carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the facts, wherever they lead," Bush said at the bill-signing ceremony with Kissinger, 79, at his side. "We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the 11th."
White House officials said Kissinger was an attractive choice for the job because while he has extensive experience, he had been out of government for long enough that he had few ties to the people and agencies whose actions he would be examining.
Advisers to the White House said the administration believed that Kissinger had sufficient prestige that he could not be portrayed as a lackey of Bush, but at the same time was someone Bush and his staff could be comfortable with.
The appointment came as a surprise to family members of the Sept. 11 victims, who had been the primary force behind passage of the legislation by Congress and who had been consulting both with the administration and congressional leaders about who would be on it.
It also raised questions among Democrats about whether Kissinger, who has served in some capacity under every Republican president since Nixon, would be willing to pursue an aggressive investigation that would delve into sensitive topics like the role of Saudi Arabia and risk findings that could prove politically explosive for Bush.
In particular, they pointed to Kissinger's record of operating in secrecy and allegations that he had hidden his behind-the-scenes roles in incidents such as the 1973 coup in Chile that toppled the Socialist government of Salvador Allende.
'Resisted openness'
"With Kissinger, you get a senior, distinguished man with a good reputation who is unlikely to do a vigorous job when you don't want a vigorous job done," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. "His whole career has been one in which he has resisted openness."
But some Democrats said they were confident that Kissinger's stature and visibility, combined with the appointment of Mitchell by the Democrats and promises by the victims' families to keep up the pressure for a no-holds-barred inquiry, ensured that the commission would not be toothless.
"Dr. Kissinger, I am sure, does not want this latest act of public service to end in a way that people say it was done incompletely" or leaves questions about protecting the administration, the intelligence agencies or any other group, said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat who was among the legislation's sponsors.
'Go where facts lead us'
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Kissinger said, "We will go where the facts lead us."
Asked whether he would be constrained by sensitivities about dealing with Saudi Arabia and other countries as the United States confronts Iraq and battles terrorism, Kissinger said, "We are under no restrictions, and we will accept no restrictions."
The job of chairman of the commission is to be part time, although White House officials said they expected that Kissinger would dedicate considerable time to it. They said he would not resign as chairman of Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm he runs, and would serve as the commission's chairman without pay.
Kissinger is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the architect of detente with the Soviet Union during the 1970s and a believer in unsentimental assertions of national interest in pursuing foreign policy. But he has also drawn intense criticism from both the left and the right, and has been branded everything from a war criminal for his role in the secret expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia to an enabler of Nixon's worst traits.
Kissinger was kept on the sidelines of power during the Reagan administration, where he was viewed with suspicion by officials who were advocating a hard line with the Soviets. But he rebuilt ties to the White House during the administration of the current president's father as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. And over the past year, he has used his relationships with current administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, to become closer to Bush.
People with ties both to Kissinger and the White House said that the former secretary of state had been invited to the White House over the past year for a series of lunches with Bush and Cheney.
White House advisers said Cheney, who first worked with Kissinger in the Ford administration, was the first to raise the idea of approaching him.
Administration officials said the idea was broached to the president about a month ago by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff. They said Card suggested Kissinger's name during a conversation with the president on the South Lawn about a month ago, before the bill passed Congress.
Bush told Card on Monday that he had settled on Kissinger to lead the commission, and Card offered Kissinger the job later that day, a senior White House official said.
The reaction to the appointment on Capitol Hill and among family members of the Sept. 11 victims was generally positive.
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said Kissinger "brings a great depth of experience, wisdom and respect" to the job.
Stephen Push, the leader of Families of Sept. 11, a group that lobbied for establishment of the commission, said the combination of Kissinger and Mitchell was a strong one.
"We're pleased with both appointments," he said. The appointment of Kissinger in particular showed that "the administration is taking this very seriously."
Kissinger's appointment was the talk of the town on a day when most of official Washington was intent on getting out of town for Thanksgiving, including Bush, who left for his ranch in Texas immediately after the announcement.
'Vietnam and detente'
"Two words explain just about everything about Henry Kissinger: Vietnam and detente," said Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served on the National Security Council under Clinton.
"It was the Vietnam War in particular that led to him being reviled on the left," he said. "On the right it was detente, the notion that you could find an accommodation with the Soviet Union."
Daalder said Kissinger had proved "willing to shape his opinions in ways that tend to be politically astute." That trait, he said, made it possible that Kissinger would come to a conclusion about Sept. 11 in line with that put forward by Bush administration officials: that "no one could possibly have known this would happen, and it certainly wasn't our fault, and if it was anyone's fault it was someone who was president before us."
But Kissinger's supporters said he would not pull any punches.
"At age 79, he is not about to have his credibility hijacked," said Kenneth Duberstein, who was White House chief of staff in the Reagan administration and is a friend of Kissinger's. "He is a man of such international stature that his credibility is unchallenged."