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Kenneth Kitts offers entry into the highly political, behind-closed-doors world of blue-ribbon investigative commissions convened in the aftermath of national security crises. Ranging from Pearl Harbor to the September 11 terrorist attacks, Kitts takes the reader into the ""backroom"" to watch as presidents, their advisers, and commission members confront an armory of pressures. With rich detail and accounts of political intrigue, he reveals just how and when presidents reach for the blue-ribbon option to try to defuse crises, deflect criticism, and maintain control of national security policy - and how presidential expectations are sometimes unmet, as commissions issue damning reports with unforeseen and explosive consequences.