9/11 Panel Clintonista Got Special Access to PDBs

NewsMax.com ^ | 4/09/04 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

A former Clinton administration official who sits on the 9/11 Commission has been granted special access to key evidence denied to other 9/11 Commissioners, despite that fact that she has a pronounced conflict of interest in the case.

"I'm the only commissioner aside from the chairman and vice chairman who has seen all the [Presidential Daily Briefings]," 9/11 panel member Jamie Gorelick told MSNBC Thursday night.

Gorelick said she had gotten an advanced look at August 6, 2001 PDB warning that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack the U.S.

Gorelick was the Clinton administration's deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, who repeatedly urged the White House not to attack bin Laden after the bombings of the USS Cole and two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Reno is also said to have advised President Clinton to turn down an offer from Sudan for bin Laden's extradition to the U.S. in 1996, because he could not legally be held under U.S. statutes according to her interpretation of the law.

Gorelick has never publicly explained what, if any, role she played in Justice Department recommendations that bin Laden not be dealt with more forcefully prior to the 9/11 attacks.

[kattracks]

"I'm the only commissioner aside from the chairman and vice chairman who has seen all the [Presidential Daily Briefings]," 9/11 panel member Jamie Gorelick told MSNBC Thursday night.

Well, this special access didn't help poor Jamie one bit. Condi wiped the floor with her. Without even raising a sweat.

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[Piquaboy]

Gorelick! Thats almost as bad as Clintonlick.

[Cold Heat]

She is also known to have buried the TWA 800 investigation.

The question here is........did the dems choose her to cover something up, or expose something.

My guess is that she is there to cover for clinton and shift the blame to Bush.

The reward will be a big job with the so called kerry admin.

[bray]

This is outrageous!! She let bin Laden escape numerous times and she is on the Commiesion??? What a complete joke and disgrace to act like that Commision is anything other than a political hatchet job. Gorelick was a dumb as a stump and we can only guess what BJ saw in her??? Condi Rice Rox

Pray for W and The Truth

[smiley]

Condi made Gorelick look even more stupid and confused than she normally is.

[plain talk]

Gorelick was the Clinton administration's deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, who repeatedly urged the White House not to attack bin Laden after the bombings of the USS Cole and two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Right. Gorelick and her ilk is a large part of the problem and yet she is on this commission investigating 9/11? Its an outrage. And why are no Republican elected officials expressing outrage over the members of this commission?

[aruanan]

Reno is also said to have advised President Clinton to turn down an offer from Sudan for bin Laden's extradition to the U.S. in 1996, because he could not legally be held under U.S. statutes according to her interpretation of the law.

But according to Reno's interpretation of the Constitution, she could use the military to attack and burn children and pregnant women in their home. She lets a terrorist off the hook. She commits terrorism against U.S. citizens. Sounds like Reno's interpretation of the law is just about equivalent to that of the terrorists.

[FLAUSA]

You gotta be kidding me! Her name is Gorelick? Truth is stranger than fiction, again.

[wordsofearnest]

I watched the replay of Dr. Rice's testimony last night. This commission is patently political and will serve no legitimate purpose. Dr. Rice needs to be POTUS in 2008.

[mtbopfuyn]

Gorelick has never publicly explained what, if any, role she played in Justice Department recommendations that bin Laden not be dealt with more forcefully prior to the 9/11 attacks.

As an American citizen, I request Gorelick make televised sworn testimony of her knowledge of AQ, OBL, the Taliban, and SH.

[Cold Heat]

And why are no Republican elected officials expressing outrage over the members of this commission?

There was a feeble attempt, but the dems were successful in framing it as a 9/11 cover-up attempt by the admin.

You know how it works.......... They are still doing it by constant requests to make classified docs public and to make Condi appear in public so that they could try to take some of the shine of the admin.

they have, unfortunately, been somewhat successfully. But, it is early in the election cycle.

i expect the next whammy to occur when the report is released and the interim leaks in between.

This definitely is not going away.

[mtbopfuyn]

So, why is this not being reported in the national media? You really should send this out to them all.

[TheGrimReaper]

Given the partisan hacks that the dems have stacked on their side of the Commission, the panel should be renamed in the interest of "truth in advertising":

Committee to Rehabilitate the Legacy of Bill Clinton (and dump all blame on GWB)

[plain talk]

There was a feeble attempt, but the dems were successful in framing it as a 9/11 cover-up attempt by the admin.

Sounds about right. Just curious. Do you recall which Republicans expressed outrage over the commission members, specifically Gorelick and Ben-Veniste? I may have missed it unless it was a shallow generic attack and not a specific attack on the credibility of these commission members.

[Cold Heat]

Committee to Rehabilitate the Legacy of Bill Clinton (and dump all blame on GWB)

Absolutely!

But, here is a bit of good news.

I live in a blue county.

The rats control everything here and they hate Bush!

My wife works at a local pharmacy and they have a coffee shop where many of the local rats collect to air their BS about Bush.

She said that the consensus was that Codi gave a good show and that nobody could have prevented 9/11.

i thought this interesting......one must also consider that southern dems have a Conservative side and they hate being manipulated by the DNC or anyone.

I just thought I might pass this on as some decent news in the midst of all this character assassination garbage.

[Cold Heat]

Codi=Condi=too much coffee

[kcvl]

Jamie Gorelick is a partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Prior to joining Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in July 2003, Gorelick was vice chair of Fannie Mae. As part of the four-person Office of the Chairman, she shared responsibility for overall management of the company, directed its efforts to reach underserved markets and oversaw Fannie Mae's external relationships, legal and regulatory affairs. Prior to joining Fannie Mae in May 1997, Gorelick was deputy attorney general of the United States, a position she assumed in March 1994. From May 1993 until she joined the Justice Department, Gorelick served as general counsel of the Department of Defense. From 1979 to 1980 she was assistant to the secretary and counselor to the deputy secretary of energy. In the private sector, from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1980 to 1993, Gorelick was a litigator in Washington, D.C., representing major U.S. companies on a broad range of legal and business matters. She served as president of the District of Columbia Bar from 1992 to 1993. Gorelick is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

She also serves on several boards, including the Fannie Mae Foundation, United Technologies Corporation, Schlumberger(the second-largest oil services firm after Halliburton, which is also doing business with Iraq through subsidiaries - Halliburton's chief rival), Limited, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Harvard College Board of Overseers, America's Promise, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and The National Park Foundation.

She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Law Institute. Gorelick co-chaired, with Senator Sam Nunn, the Advisory Committee of the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, and currently serves on the Central Intelligence Agency's National Security Advisory Panel as well as the President's Review of Intelligence.

[kcvl]

March 21, 1997

CLINTON TRIED TO GET SECRET FBI FILES ON CHINESE
By Staff Investigative Journalists

WASHINGTON DESK - President Bill Clinton told reporters he was not told about the June 1996 FBI warnings of Communist Chinese involvement in the 1996 presidential election. However, it was learned on Tuesday that president Clinton may have actually known and that he subsequently made a thwarted attempt to obtain the counterintelligence information about what the FBI had learned of the Communist Chinese influence on the presdidential election last November.

President Clinton's legal counsel, Charles Ruff, made the FBI contact. Ruff contacted Janet Reno's deputy Jamie Gorelick and wanted to know what federal investigators knew or suspected about Chinese illegal contributions to the presidential campaign.

However, when FBI director Freeh learned of the White House probe by Gorelick, he ordered the information not be provided to Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said.

In a New York Times story Ruff is quoted as telling Gorelick he was seeking the information on behalf of the National Security Council.

Ruff, said Monday that there was nothing improper about his contacts with the Justice department.

The Times story depicted Clinton's probe to obtain the secured FBI files as a written request marked TOP SECRET. Ruff said in an interview Monday, 'This was a matter being dealt with by the National Security Council in its capacity as adviser to the president.'

However, law enforcement officials pointed out that Ruff's request was received only after FBI director Freeh had left Washington on a trip to the Middle East.

In his absence, attorney general Janet Reno and Gorelick quickly moved to obtain the secret FBI files. Before the Justice Department turned over the FBI files to Clinton's legal counsel, Robert Bryant, then head of the FBI national security division, picked up the telephone and informed Freeh of Clinton's probe for the secret files on the Chinese investigation.

Freeh ordered the files withheld.

[kcvl]

April 12, 2003

As deputy attorney general, Gorelick played a key role in shaping – some would say "corrupting" – the outcome of the TWA Flight 800 investigation. Given what she knows, Gorelick could play an even more critical role in determining "prior knowledge" about the events of Sept. 11. But the question remains: Did congressional Democrats appoint Gorelick to share the truth or suppress it? She has the power to do either.

In 1994, Gorelick assumed the deputy position after Clinton crony Webster Hubbell resigned in disgrace. In time, she would hand it on to her successor, Eric Holder, who himself would be disgraced in the Marc Rich affair.

Gorelick was much brighter and more nimble than either and kept a lower profile. Like them, however, she served as the "political officer" in the 100,000-employee department, the eyes and ears of the administration, the one who could be trusted. An article in the June 3, 1996, Newsweek, six weeks before the crash of TWA Flight 800, described, for instance, how Gorelick had set up a "campaign-like war room" in her office because "in a campaign year, Justice can't afford to be totally blind."

No, in a campaign year, with the president's survival at stake, Justice could not afford to be blind at all. On Aug. 22, 1996, Jim Kallstrom, who headed up the FBI investigation into TWA 800, was summoned to Washington to be served up a dose of survival reality. His boss, Louis Freeh, had little to do with the summons or the investigation. Nor did Freeh's boss, Attorney General Janet Reno. Although both were ineffectual, neither was entirely reliable. The task of reining in Jim Kallstrom would fall to Gorelick. At this juncture in the investigation, even if Gorelick knew no more than what she read in the New York Times, she would have known that explosive residue had been found all over the plane and that the possibility of a mechanical failure was more "remote" than ever.

The search for "prior knowledge" is at the heart of the 9-11 Commission. No one on the commission is in a better position to shed light on this issue than Jamie Gorelick. She could begin by sharing the contents of her meeting with Jim Kallstrom on Aug. 22, 1996. This presumes, of course, that congressional Democrats appointed Gorelick because they wanted her to shed light and share information. The cynic in me, however, suspects that Gorelick was appointed for rather the opposite reason.

Cashill's new book, "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America"