The Roberts Commission and the limits of accountability

The Roberts Commission is examined through the legal and political background of its chair, Justice Owen Roberts. The criticism is that its inquiry looked down the chain of command toward Kimmel and Army commander Walter Short rather than up toward civilian policy and naval leadership in Washington. Kimmel's defense was that crucial information used to judge him had never been made available to him. The institutional problem is that an investigation can fault local command decisions while leaving the policies and information handling that constrained them comparatively unexamined.