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(BLOOMINGTON, Ind.) – Six of the eight surviving members of the 9/11 Commission are reuniting in Bloomington this week to discuss their work, and whether the U.S. is safer today.

The bipartisan panel issued 41 recommendations in 2002. All but one were adopted. The two former Hoosier congressmen who served on the commission, Democrats Lee Hamilton and Tim Roemer, say the commission’s success lies in how it went about its business. The panel was balanced equally between Republicans and Democrats, and Hamilton says its members all placed national security above partisanship.

Roemer says the commission’s recommendations helped the U.S. adjust its security and intelligence structure from a Cold War mindset guarding against rival countries, to one more suited to the new threat of terrorism which crosses national borders. He notes terror groups haven’t mounted a successful attack in the U.S. in the 20 years since.

But Roemer cautions that while the panel’s recommendations may have helped address the threats of 2001, the world is now at another inflection point. He says the threat of terrorism hasn’t disappeared, but it’s been joined by other threats which also cross national borders, from cybersecurity to climate change to pandemics.

And former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, who co-chaired the commission with Hamilton, says he’s worried about whether the willingness to put politics aside in a bipartisan search for facts is still possible in an ever more polarized nation. While the phrase “9/11-style commission” has become shorthand for that kind of impartial inquiry, Kean notes there hasn’t been one. Former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick says the 9/11 model would have been particularly appropriate for investigating the January 6 Capitol riots, and why intel about the nature of the gathering wasn’t acted on.

“Very few things work in government. Usually, when something works, it’s emulated,” Kean says. “And yet we’ve never had a commission like it since.”

Gorelick says the House committee investigating January 6 is better than nothing, but Kean says the strength of the 9/11 panel was that it was bipartisan not just in its makeup but its approach. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman says he joined the panel assuming there would be a minority report at the end. Instead,Lehman says the panel’s meticulous focus on uncovering and focusing on the facts left no need for one — the final report was unanimous.

Roemer says he advised House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her push for an independent January 6 commission, and notes it passed the House with support from 35 Republicans. It fell short by three votes in the Senate due to the chamber’s filibuster rules. Roemer says he’s optimistic an outside probe may yet happen.

The commission’s reunion in Bloomington, its first in 10 years, includes two days of discussions with students and interviewers for a documentary on the panel’s work, scheduled for release next year.

Two members of the commission, former Washington Senator Slade Gorton and former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson, died five days apart last August.