President Bush hit a sour note when he named Henry Kissinger, of all people, to head a supposedly independent investigation into the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

If anything, Bush should be naming a commission to investigate Kissinger. Perhaps then we might get a full picture of the dealings of one of the most simultaneously respected and reviled figures in modern diplomacy.

Kissinger is remembered fondly by some as the witty and bespectacled diplomat and TV sound-bite artist with the trademark accent who helped President Richard Nixon open the door to China and pull America out of the Vietnam War, which brought him a shared Nobel Peace Prize.

But he also is remembered less fondly by much of the world as a war criminal.

Kissinger has to consult a lawyer before he goes outside the United States, for fear of being detained and charged with human rights violations, much like what happened to former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1998.

Investigative judges in Spain, France, Chile and Argentina seek to question him in several legal actions related to war crimes, particularly in Latin America, all of which Henry the K has denied.

Here at home, he is not known to expose secrets unless there's a buck in it for him. Kissinger has succeeded despite legal challenges in keeping tens of thousands of pages of documents, created by government workers on the taxpayers' dime, in his private possession. That way, he can sanitize them and dribble them out in historical nuggets for his best-selling memoirs.

As more declassified documents from the Kissinger years come into daylight, so do a string of questionable connections to dictators and potentates around the globe.

There was his help to the Nixon administration's organizing of the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969. It expanded the war into that peaceful country and led later to the fall of Cambodia to the genocidal Khmer Rouge in precisely the regional "domino effect" that the Vietnam War was supposed to prevent.

When the bombing leaked to the media, Kissinger allowed the FBI to wiretap members of his staff in a failed attempt to find the leaker.

Documents also revealed that he was deeply involved in America's blatantly anti-democratic efforts to prevent the election of Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende.

Kissinger's task will be to investigate intelligence failures and whether the 9/11 attacks could have been avoided. One wonders, among other targets, how closely he will investigate the role of Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 hijackers, 15 out of 19 of whom were Saudi nationals.

Kissinger's privately held consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, does not publish a client list and compels its clients to sign confidentiality agreements.

Nonetheless, as Christopher Hitchens, author of last year's well-documented book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," notes, Kissinger's business dealings with regimes like China's communist leadership closely match his public tolerance for human rights atrocities, such as the massacre of Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Given the strong ties between himself and the oil oligarchies of the Persian Gulf, "it must be time for at least a full disclosure of his interests in the region," Hitchens writes in Slate.com.

Indeed, it must.

Yet, as Hitchens continues, "This thought does not seem to have occurred to the president or to the other friends of Prince Bandar and Prince Bandar's wife, who helped in the evacuation of the Bin Laden family from American soil, without an interrogation, in the week after Sept. 11."

Ah, touchy stuff. One wonders about how diligently Kissinger, a long-time friend, like the Bushes, of the Saudi royal family, will pursue these and other matters that stomp on politically, diplomatically or economically sensitive toes.

Bush's naming of George J. Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader and peace envoy to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, as vice chairman was a reassuring step in the right direction, although the diplomatic Mitchell is not known for ruffling feathers.

Which leaves us to wonder what kind of muddled memorial this new commission may become for the victims of 9-11 and their families. Bush did not want the investigation in the first place. Naming a political lightning rod like Kissinger serves to discredit the investigation before it begins.

Bush has promised an independent investigation aimed at full disclosure. He should begin with full personal disclosure by the investigators.

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