Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean says that there should be a 9/11 Commission-style investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

Kean was chairman of the bipartisan commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attack. He says that the United States should set up a similar investigation into the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think there’s a lot of blame to share. We didn’t handle it properly. We were slow off the mark, and we paid the price for being slow off the mark,” says Kean. “But there is blame to go around. I don’t think we should blame people now. I think we should blame people later.”

Kean says that he thinks that an investigation into the coronavirus should wait until tensions between the political parties subside.

“We need to all be one. Coming together to really finish off this virus. Get our vaccine, get our treatments, and then, when we’ve done that and we’ve got this country back on the road to recovery, then is the time to look back. That is the time to get a bipartisan group together and say, ‘Alright, let’s have a serious look at this.’ What mistakes were made and what recommendations can we make to make sure this never, ever happens again,” Kean says.

The 9/11 Commission has become a literal textbook case for how to handle a bipartisan probe into a disaster. The commission found that it could have been prevented. Kean says that he sees the parallels.

“We weren’t alert to this very, very early on. And it was going on in China. And it wasn’t just our government who should have known that. The CIA, the intelligence agencies, have spies all over the world. We should have heard it from them,’ he says.

Kean says that a lot has changed in the world in the 18 years since the 9/11 Commission.

“That work, that was the last bipartisan, major thing that happened in this country, believe it or now. All those years ago. We haven’t had anything like it since. So, we should learn from that,” he says.

Kean served as New Jersey’s governor from 1982 until 1990.