9/11 Commission lawyer on probes, power and Trump

Minnesota native Michael Hurley led CIA and U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan right after 9/11 and was senior counsel on the 9/11 Commission, co-authoring the report that detailed the failure of key government agencies to stop the attack.

He knows firsthand the challenges of government investigating itself. He spoke to MPR News on Friday about independent commissions, politics and staying vigilant in the future.

Need for an independent panel

Because of his past experiences on the 9/11 panel, Hurley said he favors an independent commission to probe Russian election interference and possible ties to Trump associates. "It certainly provides that sort of firewall between the political appointees at the top of the Department of Justice and the White House," he said.

A commission could succeed "because of the expertise it could draw, not just from the government but from the private sector, in the information technology area, to get the best experts and try to figure out how do we protect our electoral systems from the wave that's going to be sweeping over us in the coming years," he said.

Ceding power

Political leaders sometimes dislike the idea of appointing a special prosecutor because the investigation can expand "rather rapidly into other unrelated areas, and that sometimes scares Congress. They then seem to lack control over it in terms of what it's actually going to be investigating."

Hurley said he understood the concerns of Republican who control the House and Senate to cede power to an independent body but he argued the country needs to dig deep to find out exactly what happened and then focus on stopping future hacks because the Russians will likely try to interfere in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

"We really need to get our house in order," he added, "to not just worry about who did what wrong in the past, although I think we have to have those answers, but to really focus on ensuring the safety and security of our systems in the future."

Trump and Comey

Before firing him, President Trump said he asked FBI Director James Comey whether he was under investigation as part of the Russian election hacking probe.

While Hurley said it likely wasn't illegal for Trump to ask, "it does seem to be inappropriate to me. After all, the president is the boss of the director of the FBI. To raise that question strikes me as putting the director in an awkward position, if the question was asked."

Click on the audio bar above to hear the entire interview.