WASHINGTON – Washington state is scheduled as a stop when the Sept. 11 commission, seeking to build momentum for its proposed intelligence reforms, sets out on a nationwide campaign next week that members believe can be key to promoting change in a presidential election year.
The strategy will send commissioners in bipartisan pairs around the country to think tanks, call-in shows and newspaper editorial boards. The panel’s leaders, Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton, will make their case before congressional panels in Washington, D.C.
The campaign begins Tuesday, when Republican Slade Gorton, a former U.S. senator from Washington, and Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, visit Seattle. Republican Fred Fielding and Democrat Jamie Gorelick, both Washington, D.C, lawyers, travel to Boston on Tuesday.
Republican John Lehman, a former a Navy secretary, is to visit Houston and Dallas, and Democrat Bob Kerrey, a former U.S. senator from Nebraska, hopes to join him. In subsequent weeks, Democrat Timothy Roemer, a former Indiana congressman, will travel with Fielding and Republican James Thompson, a former Illinois governor, to Atlanta and Chicago.
Other cities will be targeted in the hopes of reaching the widest audience to tell voters to ask politicians whether they support the Sept. 11 commission’s agenda to overhaul the nation’s intelligence apparatus, members said.
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