Gorelick 'MemoGate': It Just Got Worse

ChronWatch ^ | 8/12/05 | Gregory Borse

[NormsRevenge]

In March of 1995, Louis Freeh, then FBI Director, and Mary Jo White, the New York U.S. attorney investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, received a directive written by Jamie Gorelick, President Clinton’s number two official in the Justice Department. That directive—which has come to be known as the “wall of separation” memo—ordered Freeh and White to “go beyond what is legally required” in following information-sharing procedures between intelligence agencies and agencies charged with criminal investigations of suspected terrorists. At issue, seemingly, was a White House concern to avoid “any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” that the civil liberties of terrorism suspects were being undermined.

As has come to light in the past few days, the Gorelick Memo seems to be at the heart of the non-passing of information discovered by a counter-terrorism military operation known as “Able Danger” to the FBI that Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hi-jackers had set up an al-Queda cell in Brooklyn, New York, as early as a year prior to the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, the information that White House or Department of Defense attorneys denied “Able Danger’s” request to give that information to the FBI was furnished to staff members of the Sept. 11 Commission—of which Jamie Gorelick was a sitting member—as early as October of 2003. But that information was not given to Commission members then and does not appear in the Commission’s final report.

As has been reported in the New York Post today, by Deborah Orin, and quoted in a story on NewsMax.com (go here), Mary Jo White wrote to the Justice Department about the Gorelick directive, complaining, “It is hard to be totally comfortable with the instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States’ Attorneys Office when such prohibitions are not legally required.” According to Orin in the Post account, White was so frustrated that she sent a second memo excoriating the Gorelick “wall of separation” as “hinder[ing] law enforcement,” saying that its prohibitions “could cost lives.”

The questions now are why did Commission staffers not inform the Sept. 11 Commission members of “Able Danger’s” October 2003 report of prior knowledge of an al-Queda cell in Brooklyn, New York a year before the 9/11 attacks? Why is Mary Jo White’s testimony in the Sept. 11 Commission investigation not included in the Commission’s final report? And, finally, why was the Gorelick directive ever written in the first place?

An article from FrontPageMag.com from May of 2004 may shed some light on the reasons for the Gorelick directive (go here). The story suggests strongly that the Clinton Administration worked strenuously, in 1995, to re-organize the ways in which intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI were allowed to communicate with each other and with U.S. Attorneys Offices investigating foreign and domestic espionage cases and that the Gorelick Memo itself is an outgrowth of policies erected under Clinton’s “Presidential Decision Directive 24”:

“In April [2004], CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, . . . created ‘a roadblock’ to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw.”

That maze includes FBI and CIA investigations into the leaking and/or theft of sensitive missile and nuclear information to the Chinese even as illegal donations to the Democratic National Committee were being traced to Bill Clinton’s old Arkansas friend, Johnny Chung. The bureaucratic nightmare created by PDD 24 effectively stalled these investigations until safely after the 1996 Presidential Election, and led to, among others, Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory espionage case. As Mary Jo White wrote in her letter of protest regarding the Gorelick directive, PDD 24’s “instructions leave entirely to OIPR [Office of Intelligence and Policy Review] and the (Justice Department) Criminal Division when, if ever, to contact affected U.S. attorneys on investigations including terrorism and espionage.” And whom did Clinton appoint to head up the OIPR? An old friend of Janet Reno’s from Florida, Richard Scruggs. So, as FrontPageMag pointed out, “for the first time in the history of the Justice Department,” a political appointee was “put in charge of the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review (OIPR). OIPR is the Justice Department agency in charge of requesting wiretap and surveillance authority for criminal and intelligence investigations on behalf of investigative agencies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.”

It must be noted that the Gorelick directive to Freeh and White explicitly mentions the FISA court and prohibits the sharing of information gathered by its investigative agencies with US Attorneys Offices.

The upshot of PDD 24 was that all investigations into espionage activity—including efforts by the CIA, FBI, and the United States Military counter-intelligence operations (like “Able Danger”)—were to be overseen and approved (or not approved) by political appointees that answered directly to a White House that had every reason prior to the 1996 Presidential Election for keeping those agencies from sharing information with each other or with US Attorneys Offices.

It looks like the non-sharing of the “Able Danger” information by staff members of the Sept. 11 Commission with Commission members themselves is much worse than simply an effort to shield Jamie Gorelick for some responsibility for the intelligence failures that, it is now clear, helped to make the 9/11 attacks possible. What is becoming increasingly obvious is that the Gorelick Memo itself was perhaps part of a much larger effort by the Clinton Administration to shield itself from investigations that would imply its complicity in the passing of sensitive military and nuclear intelligence to the Chinese in return for millions in illegal campaign donations in the run-up to the 1996 election.

Representative Weldon—can you spell “MemoGate”?

For a related story, go here:

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=16180&catcode=13

[Mo1]

The AP reports tonight that 9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton have changed their story yet again. Now the two say in a joint statement to the press that they do recall hearing that Able Danger had identified Atta, two days after Hamilton categorically denied it -- and for a man who had supposedly never heard of Able Danger, Hamilton's recall of detail of the briefing appears impressive (via Tom Maguire):

It STILL doesn't answer the question as to why they ignored all this evidence

All that statement from Kean and Hamilton does ... is say that they knew and did nothing about it

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well, that would prefer not to answer that question, from the JustOneMinute Blog http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/08/able_i_was_the_.html

******************************************************************

August 12, 2005

Able I Was - The Commission Pushes Back

The embattled 9/11 Commission pushed back late on Friday against charges that they had failed to investigate important revelations from a secret Pentagon project code-named "Able Danger".  The stage is set for the Sunday talk-show brawls!  [The NY Times and the WaPo pick this up.  Focus on the Times, which buries two great tidbits.  See UPDATE]:

Here we go, from the AP:

The leaders of the 9/11 commission late Friday disputed a congressman's criticism that the panel did not adequately investigate a claim that four hijackers were identified as al Qaeda members more than a year before the attacks.

In a joint statement, former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said a military official who made the claim had no documentation to back it up. And they said only 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta was identified to them and not three additional hijackers as claimed by Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

"He could not describe what information had led to this supposed Atta identification," the statement said of the military official.

We also see a bit of haze about the quality of the briefing:

During the July 12, 2004, meeting with the military official, the officer said he recalled seeing Atta's name and photo on an analyst's chart made by the secret Able Danger unit, the statement released by Kean and Hamilton said.

The relevant data discussed by the officer showed Atta to be a member of an al Qaeda cell in New York City from February to April 2000, the statement said.

But the commission knew that according to travel and immigration records, Atta first obtained a U.S. visa on May 18, 2000, and first arrived in the United States on June 3, 2000, the statement said.

Kean, a former Republican New Jersey governor, and Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said records had been sought from the U.S. Special Operations Command and none mentioned Atta or any other September 11 hijackers. They were requested after staff members from the commission were told about Able Danger during a meeting in Afghanistan.

Weldon said Friday that Atta's name was specifically mentioned during the Afghanistan meeting, but Kean and Hamilton denied that Friday in the statement.

So, no documentation from the July 12, 2004 briefer, and no documentation mentioning Atta from the Special Operation Center in response to a follow-up request after the Oct 2003 briefing.

And the briefer "recalled seeing Atta's name and photo on an analyst's chart".  That's just great - did he recall when the analyst *made* the chart?  Would he have a copy of the chart for the appropriate people to peruse?  Did the chart shown to Gen. Shelton at his Jan 2001 briefing also show Atta's name, or was that name added later?

[The WaPo has more:

According to the commission, the officer said he briefly saw the name and photo of Atta on an "analyst notebook chart." The material identified Atta as part of a Brooklyn al Qaeda cell and was dated from February through April 2000, the officer said.

"The officer complained that this information and information about other alleged members of a Brooklyn cell had been soon afterward deleted from the document," the statement says, because Pentagon lawyers were worried about violating restrictions on military intelligence gathering in the United States.

Oh, boy - the dog ate the documents.  And if the reference was deleted "soon afterward", what was in the briefing to Gen. Shelton in Jan 2001?]

With all that said, it does seem that the description of the briefing given here by Kean and Hamilton does not conflict with the version presented in the NY Times by Weldon's side.  Was Weldon's source failing to highlight some of the shortcomings of his briefing?

And from a different perspective - do we trust this Commission to investigate itself?  Do we need a new commission to investigate the old one?  [The Captain trusts this Commission about as far has he could throw all ten of them; MacMind is still in the Skeptic's Corner.]

There is no statement (yet) at the 9/11 Public Discourse Project website.

UPDATE:  [Reaction links with Betsy Newmark].  The Times has some great material at the end:

In an interview this week, a former senior military officer disputed that the unit members had ever presented to their superiors information that identified Mr. Atta or other suspected members of Al Qaeda.

Ahh!  Is the "former senior military officer" Gen, Shelton himself, or an aide?

And many have asked, how many names did "Able Danger" generate - a mini-phone book is not actionable.  Here we go:

The former defense intelligence official, who was interviewed twice this week, has repeatedly said that Mr. Atta and four others were identified on a chart presented to the Special Operations Command. The former official said the chart identified about 60 probable members of Al Qaeda.

On the main explanation offered by the Commission and covered by the AP, the Times is also stronger:

The Sept. 11 commission concluded that an intelligence program known as Able Danger "did not turn out to be historically significant," despite hearing a claim that the program had identified the future plot leader Mohammed Atta as a potential terrorist threat more than a year before the 2001 attacks, the commission's former leaders said in a statement on Friday evening.

The statement said a review of testimony and documents had found that the single claim in July 2004 by a Navy officer was the only time the name of Mr. Atta or any other future hijacker was mentioned to the commission as having been known before the hijackings. That account is consistent with statements this week by a commission spokesman, but it contradicts claims by a former defense intelligence official who said he had told the commission staff about Able Danger's work on Mr. Atta during a briefing in Afghanistan in October 2003.

...

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton also noted that the name and character of Able Danger had not been publicly disclosed when the commission issued its public report in 2004. They said the commission had concluded that the July 2004 testimony by the Navy officer, who said he had seen an Able Danger document in 2000 that described Mr. Atta as connected to a cell in Brooklyn "was not sufficiently reliable" to warrant further investigation, in part because the officer could not supply documentary evidence to prove it.

The leaders said the staff learned about the program in the October 2003 briefing and later sought Defense Department documents about it. But those department documents, they said, "had mentioned nothing about Atta, nor had anyone come forward between September 2001 and July 2004 with any similar information."

Representative Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who has called attention to the program, said the commission had done too little to follow up on the information. Mr. Weldon said he would continue to "push for a full accounting of the historical record so that we may preclude these types of failures from happening again."

Again - do we trust the Commission to investigate itself?  And do we trust Weldon not to hype his pet projects?

August 12, 2005 | Permalink

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Comments

then why did they (commission spokes people) initially deny any briefing took place? Additiionally, you have the best question...

And from a different perspective - do we trust this Commission to investigate itself? Do we need a new commission to investigate the old one?

Sorta like the UN investigating Oil for Food. The AB information, if even to illustrate why intelligence sharing is good, should have at very the least been MENTIONED. I mean I would be tangently interested in knowing the military was conducting a secret data mining operation at least.

also, there are (accordding to Weldon) 4 info on AD sources and I seem to recall the military source said he was eagar to testify under oath in hearings...if his "briefing" was so flimsy flamsy, and he couldn't recall specifics then seems like he wouldn't be so cocksure ready to testify.

yes this is the classic CYA push back, only creepy that it is the 911 commission vs. the secret military ops guy

Posted by: peapies | August 12, 2005 09:29 PM

I tend to think this is classic August news slowness.

We don't need any more (public and, therefore, political) investigations. Personally, I am confident that John Negroponte and Porter Goss will right the intel ship.

Posted by: Seven Machos | August 12, 2005 10:17 PM

Sorry, self-serving denials don't prove anything. Is it really far fetched to think that commission staff members might have "fixed the evidence around" (to borrow a phrase from the Downing Street memo) their pre-conceived conclusion that Clinton did no wrong and that the war in Iraq had no connection with the War on Terror. After all, this is the commission whose staff members drafted the cockamamie report summary that said there was no "operational relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Then, when Dick Cheney challenged that statement and was attacked by the media, Chairman Lee Hamilton told reporters that Cheney's statement asserting that there was such a connection was correct. The summary's conclusion also contradicted many of the commission's own findings (not to mention the Clinton Justice Dept. which presented evidence of just such a connection in their 1998 indictment against Bin Laden).

This commission was politicised from the beginning and Democrats wanted their witch hunt. They misstated their own findings in their own summary which their own chairmen contradicted. Try as you might to confuse the issues, Mohammed Atta and three other highjackers were identified as dangers to our security in 2000 and the Clinton administration didn't tell domestic law enforcement because of the Gorelick Wall and the base political calculation that it might look like they were discriminating against Arab men.

The issue isn't what we know now about Atta (and there are a lot of things we don't know). Instead, the purpose of the commission was to analyze what went wrong with our intelligence and counter terrorism operations prior to 9/11. The Able Danger report is what's called a smoking gun. Clinton valued his approval rating over our national security and this episode proves it. The commission staffers tried to sweep this information under the rug because they didn't want this evidence coming out.

Posted by: JJ | August 13, 2005 03:56 AM

"Personally, I am confident that John Negroponte and Porter Goss will right the intel ship."

I wish I was Seven. They are only 2 against an apparent snake pit of partisan warfare in our intelligence agencies. What's going to happen in '08 when Jilly gets elected and Sheila 'hurricane' Jackson Lee is our new intelligence director?

I'm beginning to think they need to fire everyone, bulldoze Langley and start over.

OT though, who are we to believe about this? The 9/11 commish or a high level military officer? I know where my money is.

Posted by: Dwilkers | August 13, 2005 05:29 AM

Hmmm ... so in the same breath they justify ignoring the information they claim they never saw.

Posted by: boris | August 13, 2005 05:35 AM

And do we trust Weldon not to hype his pet projects?

Great Moments in Future History:

"Representative Weldon contends that the use of V-22 Osprey by both military and civilian law enforcement agencies might have foiled 9/11 attacks and the Osprey's future use would enhance our national security against terrorism."

Posted by: BumperStickerist | August 13, 2005 06:44 AM

JJ,
Do you really believe that the 9/11 commission was a Democratic "witchhunt"? Do you have any idea how looney that sounds? For a party that has controlled all branches of government for the last 5 years, there is still a remarkable amount of paranoia in conservative circles. Thankfully, this particular blog is consitently fact-based and reasonable.

Posted by: Anonymous Liberal | August 13, 2005 07:08 AM

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I like this:

[SerpentDove]

>>Did x43 really say, "I've had the most fun 8 years"?<<

Believe it or not, he did. It was in December 2000, in the midst of the "recount" garbage.

[SerpentDove]

>>Believe it or not, he did. It was in December 2000<<

I meant, NOVEMBER.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just came across this:

New facts back tale of brush with Atta (Bryant's incredible face-to-face meeting in 2000)

NEW intelligence reports suggesting that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta arrived in the US in late 1999 or early 2000 - six months earlier than previously thought - are likely to spark a reassessment of public servant Johnelle Bryant's incredible story of a face-to-face meeting with the terrorist.

[varon]

This is the real "government inside the government". President Clinton instituted soviet style kommissar tactics to filter and hamstring anything that might potentially damage not the presidency, but the man himself. Heads should roll on this one.

Agreed, heads should roll but you must admit that George W has been extremely nice to and protective of the Clintons. Rules and the law doe not apply to the 'chosen ones'. They make me sick, the lot of them.

What will it take for the people to reclaim their government and throw out the two political cabals that are fleecing us?

[MamaLucci]

You know why the MSM is avoiding this story, and why the Bushes will help cover Clinton, Quinn outlined it this morning. It's a damn shame too, Clinton and his demon witch of a wife could be run out of politics forever with this, but won't be because they know too much about past indescretions.

BINGO.

[SierraWasp]

I now reelize I wuz rong!!!

[FReethesheeples]

Gorelick should & can be sued civilly for gross dereliction of duty, for contributory negligence and culpability in 3,000 deaths (& counting), and for gross negligence as the DOJ "Wall of Separation" memo author, which greatly & unconscionably expanded the "letter of the law" to, in effect, protect spies and terrorists.

[M Kehoe]

Clark, Gorelick, Sandy Burglar, Tenent, Freeh, Reno, and clinton himself are all responsible for 911. They all make me sick.

5.56mm

[finnigan2]

The latest spin by the Clintonistas is that a check of records of meetings between the Commissions support staff and Able Danger military officers do not show any mention of Atta or other terrorists involved in 9/11. This should not be surprising since Gore-lick agents on the support staff would have alerted her to the danger and steps would have been taken to destroy any relevant minutes of those meetings or, failing that, to have them smuggled out of the Archives in Sandy Burglers pants.
This is not just a cover up - it is now a question of treason.

[foofoopowder]

From www.federalist.com No. 05-32 dated 8/12/05, page 4:

"Perhaps now we know the subject of classified documents from the National Archives that Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security advisor, stuffed down his shorts in order to keep them from the 9/11 Commission. As you recall, after the FBI showed up at his house with warrants last July, Berger coughed up some of the documents, but somehow all his handwritten notes regarding how the Clinton administration handled al-Qa'ida threat information in December of 1999 had disappeared."

[Uncle Vlad]

The Clinton Legacy.

[CIB-173RDABN]

"But who will ever know? The old media will bury this, and the Bush administration will help cover for Clinton."

---

The complaint that this administration has not "gone after" the former President seems to be a common theme among some on this forum.

I am wondering just what it is they would like this administration to do?

If this administration had followed the wishes of some of you, and attempted to bring criminal charges against the former President, what do you think the main stream media would do, support President Bush or support Clinton?

The MSM has been weakened over the past few years, but it is still able to shape public opinion, especially when their target behaves in a way that can be demonize (think Richard Nixon).

This President has shown restraint, and generosity towards those in the opposition, even when they in turn running to the camera every chance they get to call him every bad name they can think of, and accuse him of any and all crimes.

The end results, the American people are more then willing to give this administration the benefit of the doubt. I think it is a brilliant strategy.

Politics is doing the possible, not battling windmills.

There is an old saying if you go after the King, make sure you can take him out. If this administration were to go after the Clinton, it would have to be over something that both shocks this nation, and is provable beyond any spin. Other then that, and he would be destroyed in the process.

I have always figured that the Clintons would bring themselves down, they can not help it. They will do or say something that in the end will remove them as a political force. It is only a matter of time.

[Enchante]

re: Gorelick

The 9/11 Commission did a cover-up of so much Clinton-era malfeasance, ineptitude, and non-feasance, and Jamie Gorelick was right at the heart of everything as "THE FIXER." Many others bear various degrees and kinds of blame, but clearly Gorelick was put in position to be the "gate-keeper" for information flow to the commission and for what issues the commission actually pursued. The fact that the commission never took seriously the catastrophe of "the wall" which Gorelick was instrumental in creating in 1995 indicates the complete lack of good faith effort to truly understand how the 9/11 plots succeeded.

Gorelick had a powerful personal conflict-of-interest with the proper purposes of the 9/11 Commission, since any proper investigation of the causes of 9/11 would highlight her policies for the Justice Dept., in light of the info on "Able Danger" it is very likely that Gorelick also had a similar harmful impact upon how the "Pentagon lawyers" (who used to report to Gorelick when she was GENERAL COUNSEL for the DOD) understood the law and their duties.

Gorelick and Reno were told from early on (by Mary Jo White in NYC) why their 'wall' (which was more restrictive than anything the law required) would obstruct counter-terror investigations, but they ignored the warning from a person far more knowlegeable than either of them about investigations of terrorism. Gorelick had to cover up so many misdeeds of the Clinton years, but a good part of it started when she ignored these words from Mary Jo White:

"Our experience has been that the FBI labels of an investigation as intelligence or law enforcement can be quite arbitrary depending upon the personnel involved and that the most effective way to combat terrorism is with as few labels and walls as possible so that wherever permissible, the right and left hands are communicating."
Mary Jo White June 13, 1995

[Jeff Chandler]

The complaint that this administration has not "gone after" the former President seems to be a common theme among some on this forum.

My complaint is not that this administration has not gone after the former President, but rather that ALL the elected Republicans bend over backwards to enable the opposition to exercise power in spite of breaking the law and flaunting the rules.

At the very least, a great uproar should have arisen over the culprit Gorelick being allowed to investigate 9-11.

Sandy Burger should have been forced to reveal what it was he was sneaking into and out of the archives.

The Rockefeller memo should be brought up at every opportunity.

On and on it goes-the rats hand the Republicans swords, and the Republicans either throw them away or stab themselves with them.

All I am asking for is some spine, some aggressiveness, and some effective tactics. Assuming the fetal position in the face of the MSM just won't cut it.

[The Westerner]

Thank you. So a sentence buried in this publication called the Federalist states that Sandy Berger refused to give back to the FBI stolen documents about Clinton and Al Qaeda during the month of Dec. 1999. The month of Dec. 1999 was the time when Able Danger alerted Everyone to the existence of a very dangerous Al Qaeda cell. Then the Clinton administration chose to ignore the dangerous Al Qaeda cell which sprung into action on Sept 11, 2001 killing thousands of Americans and destroying two of our most important buildings.

It looks like Clinton did not want anyone to know that he could be blamed. But how does he get Sandy Berger to destroy himself by lying to the FBI?

[Jeff Chandler]

But how does he get Sandy Berger to destroy himself by lying to the FBI?

But he didn't destroy himself when he lied to the FBI. The rats are immune because the Republicans are cowards.

[STARWISE]

THE BOTTOM LINE PING!

IT CAN'T BE SAID, READ, REMINDED, EMAILED, PASSED ON, FAXED, PRINTED OR REMEMBERED ENOUGH! IT MUST NEVER BE FORGOTTEN .. NOR ITS LESSONS UNHEEDED .. THE EAGLES UP CRY HAS SOUNDED .... NOW WHAT IS THE PLAN OF ATTACK? WHAT MUST WE DO TO GET THE TRUTH OUT, TO GET THE PATRIOTIC, REASONABLE MEDIA ON THIS AND TO SEE THAT ACTION IS BEGUN TO SEE THAT JUSTICE IS METED OUT TO THESE UNSPEAKABLY DEMONIC CREATURES?

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

In April [2004], CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, . . . created ‘a roadblock’ to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw.”

That maze includes FBI and CIA investigations into the leaking and/or theft of sensitive missile and nuclear information to the Chinese even as illegal donations to the Democratic National Committee were being traced to Bill Clinton’s old Arkansas friend, Johnny Chung. The bureaucratic nightmare created by PDD 24 effectively stalled these investigations until safely after the 1996 Presidential Election, and led to, among others, Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory espionage case.

As Mary Jo White wrote in her letter of protest regarding the Gorelick directive, PDD 24’s “instructions leave entirely to OIPR [Office of Intelligence and Policy Review] and the (Justice Department) Criminal Division when, if ever, to contact affected U.S. attorneys on investigations including terrorism and espionage.” And whom did Clinton appoint to head up the OIPR? An old friend of Janet Reno’s from Florida, Richard Scruggs. So, as FrontPageMag pointed out, “for the first time in the history of the Justice Department,” a political appointee was “put in charge of the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review (OIPR).

OIPR is the Justice Department agency in charge of requesting wiretap and surveillance authority for criminal and intelligence investigations on behalf of investigative agencies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.”

It must be noted that the Gorelick directive to Freeh and White explicitly mentions the FISA court and prohibits the sharing of information gathered by its investigative agencies with US Attorneys Offices.

The upshot of PDD 24 was that all investigations into espionage activity—including efforts by the CIA, FBI, and the United States Military counter-intelligence operations (like “Able Danger”)—were to be overseen and approved (or not approved) by political appointees that answered directly to a White House that had every reason prior to the 1996 Presidential Election for keeping those agencies from sharing information with each other or with US Attorneys Offices.

It looks like the non-sharing of the “Able Danger” information by staff members of the Sept. 11 Commission with Commission members themselves is much worse than simply an effort to shield Jamie Gorelick for some responsibility for the intelligence failures that, it is now clear, helped to make the 9/11 attacks possible.

What is becoming increasingly obvious is that the Gorelick Memo itself was perhaps part of a much larger effort by the Clinton Administration to shield itself from investigations that would imply its complicity in the passing of sensitive military and nuclear intelligence to the Chinese in return for millions in illegal campaign donations in the run-up to the 1996 election.

Representative Weldon—can you spell “MemoGate”?

= = = = = = = = = = = =

We ALWAYS suspected it, we quaked at the thought that a US president could be so diabolical and demonic to actually sell out our security and stability, yet we knew the evil monsters they are. In our guts, we had to know what we may have feared even speaking. Why? Because we've all got PhD's in the Clintons, the most evil, debased and debauched President, wife and administration this country has ever had the misfortune and horrendous luck to have occupy the White House.

= = = = = = = = = = = =

There is a rumor already that God FORBID, should Shrillery be elected in 2008, Gorelick would be her Attorney General. THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN ... CANNOT HAPPEN .. WE HAVE TO BEGIN OUR EFFORTS AND TAKE ACTION.. N O W!!!

God, have mercy on the United States of America. We will be suffering from and paying for the side effects of this plague-ridden couple and cohorts for generations.