Bush asks Kissinger to head terror investigation   Â

The former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was named by George Bush yesterday to head a new independent commission to investigate the 11 September attacks and the failure of American intelligence services to detect the worst terrorist outrage in the country's history.

President Bush was signing legislation at the White House to set up the body, and said that the commission would help America's leaders understand the minds and methods of its new global enemy. He said that the investigation "should carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the facts wherever they lead".

The commission will have a broad mandate, building on work done by a joint House and Senate committee. It will have 18 months to do its work, though Mr Bush said he would like to have a report earlier. "The sooner we have the commission's conclusions, the sooner this administration will act on them," he said.

Mr Bush had long resisted an inquiry along the lines of the 1964 commission under Chief Justice Earl Warren into the Kennedy assassination, maintaining that its broad subpoena powers could lead to embarrassing leaks and interfere with the war against terrorism.

But the President eventually bowed to intense pressure from the families of the victims demanding that the facts be uncovered, after last summer's congressional hearings threw light on the shortcomings of the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency, and the inability of the various intelligence agencies to co-operate.

Mr Bush is to appoint the commission's 10 members, whom he insists will be evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. At least six members will be required to approve a subpoena, to ensure that witnesses are not called merely to score party-political points.

In these circumstances, Mr Kissinger is an obvious choice. Although the manipulative style and ruthless realpolitik he displayed under President Nixon and President Ford have made him something of a demon for liberals, especially over policy in Cambodia and Latin America, he remains a hugely respected figure.

Most Americans have forgotten or forgiven his role in the Vietnam War and in America's support for brutal military regimes in Chile and elsewhere. For them, the 79-year-old is above all the Nobel-prize winning co-architect with Mr Nixon of détente with the Soviet Union and China.

His ponderous, statesmanesque style make him a highly prized commentator and editorial page contributor. But most important for Mr Bush is his style, secretive where needs be and always conscious of the realities of power. This trait could become highly important if, as expected, Mr Bush himself is called before the panel to testify about what he knew of the terrorist threat before 11 September.

The commission is part of a bill allocating undisclosed extra resources to the fight against terrorism. These will go towards beefing up the CIA and the FBI, and dovetail with the creation of the new Homeland Security Department under the former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, which Mr Bush also signed into law this week. Mr Kissinger's brief is far-reaching. "We are under no restrictions and will accept no restrictions," he said on his return to government service for the first time in 25 years.

"This is a matter for all America," he declared, after speaking with family members of some of the 3,000 victims. "To the families concerned, there's nothing that can be done about the losses they've suffered – but everything must be done to ensure such a tragedy does not occur again."

If no stone is left unturned, the investigation could prove explosive. Not only will it explore how much was known by government agencies before the attacks on New York and Washington, it can also hardly avoid the matter of the foreign support for al-Qa'ida, above all from the territory of important American allies such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Controversy is raging in America about allegations that charitable donations from the wife of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US found their way to two of the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens. The Riyadh government has denied the allegations.