This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Rep. Chris Stewart may deserve his moment of awkwardness for having to backtrack on his claim that the Russian government wasn't trying to help Donald Trump win the election.

But the congressman from Utah's 2nd District, his colleagues, his constituents and the whole rest of the world deserve more definitive answers on the matter than the nation's intelligence apparatus has so far provided.

The information tying Trump to Russia — some of it official, some of it rumor — grows by the day and has raised enough red flags that some extraordinary efforts at fact-finding and reporting are necessary. A special congressional panel, if one can be operated with a minimum of partisanship, or a body in the style of the 9/11 Commission must be created, and soon.

Stewart, who last year derided Trump as "our Mussolini" before deciding to vote for him, was going to some pains last month to argue that there was no evidence that the reported hacking of U.S. politicians during the recent campaign was designed to favor Trump. He not only called such reports "BS," but also argued that, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, he knew the facts better than whoever was leaking such claims to the press.

But last week the heads of U.S. spy agencies told a Senate committee that not only was Russia behind the hacking and release of internal Democratic Party messages, but also that the drive to embarrass Hillary Clinton and her associates was a mission that came from the top of the Russian government, from President Vladimir Putin himself.

It would be entirely reasonable for Stewart to feel victimized if, indeed, the intelligence agencies gave his committee one set of answers in private and then turned around and issued the opposite conclusion to the public. The former Air Force officer reasonably prides himself on his expertise on defense and intelligence matters, expertise that this week saw him named chairman of the subcommittee that looks over the shoulder of the Department of Defense, and thus the last member of Congress who should be hung out to dry by the spy agencies.

Seeing as how the well may have been poisoned for Stewart and the rest of the Intelligence Committee — and how his Utah colleague, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, can't manage to shift his gaze away from Clinton's emails — the normal committee system is not likely to be the best means to the truth.

Treating this affair like another Benghazi, with endless and pointless repetition, is not the way to go.

A special commission, bipartisan and heavy with intelligence and cyber-security pros, should be created and should get to the bottom of these questions right away.