DAG Eric Holder was repeatedly told the ‘Wall’ was blocking intel sharing

Three times during his tenure as Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder was made fully aware that intelligence sharing with the Criminal Division was not taking place. As the officer in charge of day-to-day operations at the Department of Justice, his lack of due diligence ensured that the 'Wall' between the intelligence and criminal divisions of the FBI that Jamie Gorelick had built would remain in place for the foreseeable future. The 'Wall' stood as the Clinton administration and intelligence community saw the rising threat of al Qaeda, Ramzi Yousef was prosecuted for making the bomb used in the 1993 attack upon the World Trade Center and "Bojinka" plot to bomb American jetliners, and our embassies in Africa were attacked in 1998.

Despite being well informed in 1997 of the problem, Mr. Holder allowed the very working group he had formulated to not make a single serious recommendation; then he disbanded the group without action:

As stated in Chapter 3 of the 9/11 Commission Report, In both 1999 and 2000, "[S]eparate reviews concluded independently that information sharing was not occurring, and that the intent of the 1995 procedures was ignored routinely," yet again, Holder took no action.

By the time Holder was DAG, the effects of Jamie Gorelick's memorandum were fully entrenched, everyone was "misinterpreting" the rules. It's true that Gorelick chaired the Working Group and she wrote that they "went beyond what the law requires," but also affecting the interpretation of the rules was the Intelligence side, Criminal side culture/rivalry.

I differ slightly. DAG Eric Holder saw far more evidence of the 'Wall' than did his predecessor DAG Jamie Gorelick -- on his watch and within his lane -- just as the lights began blinking al Qaeda blood red on his control panel.

Yesterday, I was told that the staff looked at questions of the 'Wall' while vetting Eric Holder's nomination but no one seems to have tied the 9/11 Commission Report to the Bellows Report. Lacking that, minority members of the Judiciary Committee instead concentrated on concerns about his involvement in the Marc Rich and FALN pardons.

To date, what has been withheld from public view is the 9/11 Commission's Staff Monograph on the 'Wall' -- it exists, as I confirmed on January 15, 2009.

(no links)

SOME DOUBT US WOULD CUT DEAL WITH MOUSSAOUI - HIS ALLEGED 9/11 ROLE RAISES STAKES, THEY SAY
Boston Globe, The (MA) - Saturday, July 20, 2002
Author: Wayne Washington, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON - Cutting a deal with Zacarias Moussaoui would be less appealing to federal prosecutors than the plea bargain reached with John Walker Lindh, because government prosecutors believe that Moussaoui was slated to be a direct participant in the Sept. 11 attacks, legal observers said yesterday.

On Thursday, Moussaoui, 34, informed US District Court Judge Leonie M. Brinkema that he wanted to plead guilty to six terrorism conspiracy charges so that federal prosecutors would not seek a death sentence. But unlike Lindh, who faced less serious charges and was not alleged to have had a direct tie to the terrorist attacks, Moussaoui is on trial for plotting them.

The standards for a plea agreement with Moussaoui, legal observers said, should, therefore, be far higher than they were for Lindh, who pleaded guilty to two of the 10 terrorism charges against him Monday in exchange for a maximum sentence of 20 years. He had faced a possible life sentence at trial.

“I don’t know what kind of deal you strike with Moussaoui,” said Joseph diGenova, a former US attorney for the District of Columbia. “You can not negotiate a deal with one of the hijackers of Sept. 11. I can not conceive of a situation where the government would cut a deal with him.”

(snip)

President Bush, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III have insisted that preventing acts of terrorism is the top priority of federal law enforcement, but it is not certain whether Moussaoui has enough information on Binalshibh and others to justify a deal.

DiGenova said prosecutors have to question just how cooperative Moussaoui would be, because he has been in custody for nearly a year without talking and has publicly sworn allegiance to bin Laden.

“Who’s going to believe him?” diGenova said.

Eric Holder , who was deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, said he would make a deal if he believed that Moussaoui had important information to share. DiGenova said he would not, largely because he doubts that Moussaoui has such information.

“He was a small cog in the wheel,” diGenova said. “He got his money. He got his training. He was intentionally kept ignorant.”

Indeed, bin Laden has bragged on videotape that the hijackers themselves did not know other plotters and did not realize their mission was suicidal.

(snip)

ASHCROFT’S POLICE CHIEF ROLE WIDENS
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) - Sunday, November 24, 2002
Author: Karen Branch-Brioso Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau
Six decades after the threat of war in Europe prompted President Franklin Roosevelt to move the Immigration and Naturalization Service into the Justice Department, another wartime administration will move the immigration agency out — and into a new Department of Homeland Security.

The impact on Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Justice Department will be substantial, by any measure. Under the homeland security plan engineered by President George W. Bush and approved last week by Congress, the shift of immigration employees alone will take a 28 percent bite out of the Justice Department’s 141,276-member workforce. Those same employees will take more than $6 billion of the Justice Department’s $30 billion budget with them when they go.

(snip)

New freedom, new challenges

Many suggest that the departure of INS will free up Ashcroft, as well.

The Justice Department under Ashcroft has devoted enormous energy to plans to retool the agency and to separate its enforcement duties, such as deportation and border protection, from its service functions, such as issuing green cards and processing citizenship applications.

“The loss of INS is huge,” said Eric Holder , deputy attorney general from 1997 to 2000. “On a day to day basis, that will fundamentally affect the work of the leadership at the Justice Department.

“At Justice, you spend a significant portion of your time dealing with INS-related issues and INS-related problems.”

But the transfer of those issues to another department may bring new challenges to Ashcroft where law enforcement and immigration issues intersect, as they have frequently since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Holder said.

“With the loss of the (INS) enforcement side, it makes it a little more difficult to employ the use of a tool that this administration has very effectively used in combating terrorism,” Holder said. “Say, if you want to use an immigration basis to hold somebody. If the FBI has intelligence that someone who is illegally in this country is an al-Qaida supporter, it’s one thing when the FBI is just communicating within the Justice Department. It’s a whole other thing when the FBI has to communicate with another Cabinet agency. You have to form a way to have these agencies talk to each other. You have to somehow get to the informality that made the use of that INS tool so effective.”

One piece of the immigration enforcement will remain under Ashcroft’s control: the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which includes 228 immigration court judges nationwide, as well as the Board of Immigration Appeals.

(snip)

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