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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (320343)	8/19/2009 12:44:58 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Respond to of 793955

Though a leftwing nut, I'll give her credit for being one of the few lefties that aren't hypocrites on this.

To: jlallen who wrote (320343)	8/20/2009 1:41:25 AM
From: KLP	4 Recommendations Respond to of 793955

The "D's" are going to have lots to answer to one of these days....Way before 9-11, most of them considered all the Embassy, and Military Barracks, and Cole, etc etc attacks, just "criminals"....Sometime after 9-11, we all came to really understand why the FBI and CIA couldn't and didn't talk with each other in comparing notes on various terrorist activities. Thanks to Jamie Gorelick and her crew. Apparently, when the bombs have a "D on them...they are OK... Wiki reminds us of Gorelick here: en.wikipedia.org 9/11 Commission According to Gorelick's op-ed letter in the Washington Post[7] she states that: "At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that 'the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents' and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo." See original memo: [3]. However, the report from the 9/11 Commission, co-authored by Gorelick, asserts that the 'wall' limiting the ability of federal agencies to cooperate had existed since the 80's and is in fact not one singular wall but a series of restrictions passed over the course of over twenty years.[8] [edit] Conflict of Interest A 1995 Department of Justice memorandum states that the procedures her memorandum put in place, for the investigation of the first WTC bombing "go beyond what is legally required...[to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation." The wall intentionally exceeded the requirements of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) for the purposes of criminal investigations, and the then-existing federal case law. These rules were, shortly after their creation, expanded to regulate such communications in future counter-terrorism investigations.[9] Ms. Gorelick eventually recused herself from reviewing her own role in the regulation of information about terrorist activities.[citation needed] Attorney General Ashcroft was incensed before the 9/11 commission to learn that the commission had not investigated or been told of Gorelick's memo or her role regarding the "wall". This assertion was disputed by former senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), a member of the 9/11 Commission, who said, "nothing Jamie Gorelick wrote had the slightest impact on the Department of Defense or its willingness or ability to share intelligence information with other intelligence agencies." Gorton also asserted that "the wall" was a long-standing policy that had resulted from the Church committee in the 1970s, and that the policy only prohibits transfer of certain information from prosecutors to the intelligence services and never prohibited information flowing in the opposite direction.[8] However, the "Gorelick Wall" barred anti-terror investigators from accessing the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, already in custody on an immigration violation.[citation needed] "During the time of Ms. Gorelick's 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh's FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from foreign sources, involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie." [10] Mr. Trie later told investigators that between 1994 and 1996 he raised some $1.2 million, much of it from foreign sources, whose identities were hidden by straw donors. Testifying before the commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft said, "Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review," he said. "Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission."[11]

To: jlallen who wrote (320343)	8/20/2009 1:45:18 AM
From: KLP	2 Recommendations Respond to of 793955

More of the Dems at work over the years: Gorelick's Wall The Commissioner belongs in the witness chair. Thursday, April 15, 2004 12:01 A.M. EDT opinionjournal.com We predicted Democrats would use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes, and that much of the press would oblige. But color us astonished that barely anyone appreciates the significance of the bombshell Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped on the hearings Tuesday. If Jamie Gorelick were a Republican, you can be sure our colleagues in the Fourth Estate would be leading the chorus of complaint that the Commission's objectivity has been fatally compromised by a member who was also one of the key personalities behind the failed antiterror policy that the Commission has under scrutiny. Where's the outrage? At issue is the pre-Patriot Act "wall" that prevented communication between intelligence agents and criminal investigators--a wall, Mr. Ashcroft said, that meant "the old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail." The Attorney General explained: "In the days before September 11, the wall specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. After the FBI arrested Moussaoui, agents became suspicious of his interest in commercial aircraft and sought approval for a criminal warrant to search his computer. The warrant was rejected because FBI officials feared breaching the wall. "When the CIA finally told the FBI that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were in the country in late August, agents in New York searched for the suspects. But because of the wall, FBI headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the hunt for the suspected terrorists. "At that time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote headquarters, quote, 'Whatever has happened to this--someday someone will die--and wall or not--the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.' " What's more, Mr. Ashcroft noted, the wall did not mysteriously arise: "Someone built this wall." That someone was largely the Democrats, who enshrined Vietnam-era paranoia about alleged FBI domestic spying abuses by enacting the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Mr. Ashcroft pointed out that the wall was raised even higher in the mid-1990s, in the midst of what was then one of the most important antiterror investigations in American history--into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On Tuesday the Attorney General declassified and read from a March 4, 1995, memo in which Jamie Gorelick--then Deputy Attorney General and now 9/11 Commissioner--instructed then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and United States Attorney Mary Jo White that for the sake of "appearances" they would be required to adhere to an interpretation of the wall far stricter than the law required. Ms. White was then the lead prosecutor in cases related to the Trade Center bombing. Ms. Gorelick explicitly references United States v. Yousef and United States v. Rahman--cases that might have greatly expanded our pre-9/11 understanding of al Qaeda had investigators been given a freer hand. The memo is a clear indication that there was pressure then for more intelligence sharing. Ms. Gorelick's response is an unequivocal "no": "We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation" (emphases added). In case anyone was in doubt, Janet Reno herself affirmed the policy several months later in a July 19, 1995, memo that we have unearthed. In it, the then-Attorney General instructs all U.S. Attorneys about avoiding "the appearance" of overlap between intelligence-related activities and law-enforcement operations. Recall, too, that during the time of Ms. Gorelick's 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh's FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from foreign sources, involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie. Mr. Trie later told investigators that between 1994 and 1996 he raised some $1.2 million, much of it from foreign sources, whose identities were hidden by straw donors. Ms. Gorelick resigned as deputy attorney general in 1997 to become vice chairman of Fannie Mae. From any reasonably objective point of view, the Gorelick memo has to count as by far the biggest news so far out of the 9/11 hearings. The Mary Jo White prosecutions and the 2001 Moussaoui arrest were among our best chances to uncover and unravel the al Qaeda network before it struck the homeland. But thanks in part to the Clinton Administration's concern with appearances and in part to its legacy, these investigations were hamstrung. Ms. Gorelick--an aspirant to Attorney General under a President Kerry--now sits in judgment of the current Administration. This is what, if the principle has any meaning at all, people call a conflict of interest. Henry Kissinger was hounded off the Commission for far less. It's such a big conflict of interest that the White House could hardly be blamed if it decided to cease cooperation with the 9/11 Commission pending Ms. Gorelick's resignation and her testimony under oath as a witness into the mind of the Reno Justice Department. What exactly was the purpose of the wall?