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Gorelick Rule Created Legal 'Wall' to Sharing Information
New York Times ^ | April 14, 2004 | By NEIL A. LEWIS

Posted on 04/13/2004 10:16:47 PM PDT by joinedafterattack

ASHINGTON, April 13 — On Tuesday, witnesses and commissioners pondered the role of "the wall" in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Attorney General John Ashcroft told the 9/11 commission that "the wall," a legal barrier in the government preventing intelligence investigators from sharing information with criminal investigators, was the most important structural impediment to preventing the attacks.

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The wall, which has since been demolished by a special appeals court ruling, was part of a body of law that was little known to the public. It involved secret testimony and decisions by a special federal court that ruled on the requests of government investigators to install wiretaps or other listening devices on people suspected of being involved in espionage. The 1978 law that created the court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, set a lower threshold for counterintelligence agents to obtain permission for secret surveillance of espionage suspects than was required for investigators in criminal cases.

To prevent criminal investigators from using the intelligence act to seek warrants, officials and courts gradually created a rule keeping the two spheres largely separate. It was known in the government as the wall.

Applications for criminal warrants must comply with the Fourth Amendment's proscriptions against intrusive searches and required an official declaration that there was "probable cause" to believe a crime had occurred. By contrast, the intelligence surveillance law required only a showing that there was probable cause that the subject was the agent of a foreign power.

Much of this little-known legal debate became public in November 2002 when a special federal appeals court ruled that the wall had been destroyed by the counterterrorism law called the USA Patriot Act, which was enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the court added a stunning observation, saying that even without the counterterrorism law, the wall had never been necessary and that courts and Justice Department officials had misinterpreted the law for more than 20 years.

"Effective counterintelligence, as we have learned, requires the wholehearted cooperation of all the government's personnel who can be brought to the task," the court wrote. "A standard which punishes such cooperation could well be thought dangerous to national security."

In his Tuesday testimony, Mr. Ashcroft pointedly blamed one of the commission members, Jamie S. Gorelick, for enacting the wall. Ms. Gorelick was the deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who signed regulations in 1995 enforcing the wall.

"In 1995, the Justice Department embraced flawed legal reasoning, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required," Mr. Ashcroft said, adding that the wall specifically impeded investigations into two of the terrorists who hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11.

Confusion over how to interpret the wall also figured in the dispute of why the F.B.I. refused the request of its agent Colleen Rowley to seek a court authorization to explore the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001 on immigration violations. Inspection of the computer would have disclosed information showing that Islamic extremists were taking flight lessons in the United States.

"Somebody built this wall," he said, citing Ms. Gorelick's 1995 secret memorandum.

"Although you understand the debilitating impacts of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum. So I have had it declassified for you and the public to review. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission," a reference to Ms. Gorelick.

The appeals court that demolished the wall said, however, that it had been erected earlier and was only codified by Ms. Gorelick.

The court also said that it was "quite puzzling that the Justice Department, at some point during the 1980's, began to read the statute as" requiring a separation of the two fields of counterintelligence and criminal search warrants.

In her questioning of Mr. Ashcroft, Ms. Gorelick did not refer to the issue of her 1995 memorandum. But Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, challenged Mr. Ashcroft, noting that the deputy attorney general under Mr. Ashcroft renewed the 1995 guidelines. Mr. Gorton said the Bush Justice Department ratified those guidelines, saying in its own secret memorandum on Aug. 6, 2001, that "the 1995 procedures remain in effect today."


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 911commission; gorelick; gorelickmemo
Gorelick must resign now!!!!!!!
1 posted on 04/13/2004 10:16:48 PM PDT by joinedafterattack
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To: joinedafterattack
Here's a PDF of the memo:

Gorelick Memo to White, Freeh, Scruggs and Harris

2 posted on 04/13/2004 10:22:45 PM PDT by beckett
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To: joinedafterattack
gore-lick seems to have many conflicts of interest, how did she end up on this committee? Her law firm is representing Prince Mohammed al Faisal (a Saudi) against a lawsuit from 9/11 families.
Her interest in covering her butt needs to be on all media outlets.
3 posted on 04/13/2004 10:29:28 PM PDT by zowie
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To: joinedafterattack
9-11 Commission Members

Thomas H. Kean Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member
Chair

Lee H. Hamilton CFR member / Trilateral Commission (TC) member
Vice Chair

Richard Ben-Veniste
Fred F. Fielding
Jamie S. Gorelick CFR member
Slade Gorton
Bob Kerrey CFR member
John F. Lehman CFR member
Timothy J. Roemer
James R. Thompson




Commission Staff
Philip D. Zelikow CFR member
Executive Director

Chris Kojm
Deputy Executive Director

Daniel Marcus
General Counsel

________________________________________

Note: Dr. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's National Security Adviser,
is also a CFR member, as are:

Vice President Dick Cheney (formerly: a CFR director, member of the
Trilateral Commission, and former chairman,
president and CEO of Halliburton Co.)

Colin Powell, Secretary of State

Paul Wolfowitz, senior Bush administration official involved with Iraq War
(also has been member of the Trilateral Commission)

(also: former President George H.W. Bush was both a CFR director and
a member of the Trilateral Commission)




See a concise overview article about the CFR that follows. Showing the growth of CFR, the membership was 3,100 in 95 and now is over 4,000.
www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1995/vo11no10/vo11no10_tyranny.htm
4 posted on 04/13/2004 10:43:25 PM PDT by B4Ranch (“WE OFTEN GIVE OUR ENEMIES THE MEANS FOR OUR OWN DESTRUCTION.”)
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To: joinedafterattack
Click below to see Jamie Gorlick's Memo

Click Here
Adobe Acrobat Reader Required.

To try to get Ms. Gorlick removed from the 9-11 Commission, e-mail to
...info@9-11commission.gov
5 posted on 04/13/2004 10:52:27 PM PDT by Smartass ("HANOI JOHN KERRY" IS A MISERABLE TRAITOR)
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To: Mrs Zip
ping
6 posted on 04/13/2004 11:00:36 PM PDT by zip (Monthly donations are the easiest way to say Thanks for FR)
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To: B4Ranch
Showing the growth of CFR, the membership was 3,100 in 95 and now is over 4,000.

So?

7 posted on 04/13/2004 11:08:56 PM PDT by okie01 (www.ArmorforCongress.com...because Congress isn't for the morally halt and the mentally lame.)
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To: okie01
I'll let you figure it out without my prejudices rgarding the CFR.
8 posted on 04/13/2004 11:12:24 PM PDT by B4Ranch (“WE OFTEN GIVE OUR ENEMIES THE MEANS FOR OUR OWN DESTRUCTION.”)
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To: nutmeg
read later bump
9 posted on 04/13/2004 11:26:29 PM PDT by nutmeg (Why vote for Bush? Imagine Commander in Chief John F’in al-Qerry)
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To: B4Ranch
You didn't state whether you were a member of the CFR.

If you are, you should know that advertising/promoting for the purpose of club membership recruitment is against FR rules.
10 posted on 04/14/2004 12:48:46 AM PDT by AmericaUnited
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To: joinedafterattack
Are you sure the NY SLIMES is the source for this article?
11 posted on 04/14/2004 5:32:47 AM PDT by GailA (Kerry I'm for the death penalty for terrorist, but I'll declare a moratorium on the death penalty)
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To: joinedafterattack; Timesink; hellinahandcart; sauropod; kristinn
Wow! I was about to give the Slimes headline writer a rare huzzah, but then clicked to the source and found that "Gorelick" does NOT appear in the headline (though joinedafterattack otherwise has rendered it complete and accurate). By one common FR convention it might have been posted as:

[Gorelick] Rule Created Legal 'Wall' to Sharing Information

12 posted on 04/14/2004 8:11:54 AM PDT by Stultis
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To: joinedafterattack
"Although you understand the debilitating impacts of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum. So I have had it declassified for you and the public to review. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission," a reference to Ms. Gorelick.

My God, this gun is smoking so much it's on fire.

13 posted on 04/14/2004 8:15:35 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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To: Stultis
BTW, FYI to anyone who didn't watch, Ashcroft did an EXCELLENT job. Reading this memo, written by one of the Commission members, which codified what witness after witness has identified as THE major "structural" flaw preventing the detection of the 911 plot, was only one of several highlights.
14 posted on 04/14/2004 8:21:25 AM PDT by Stultis
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To: joinedafterattack; beckett; All

What is clear is that for some reason the nature and height of "the wall" underwent a qualitative change in the 1990s, as any investigator or prosecutor who dealt with it now says. Whereas previous interpretations of the FISA statute had limited the ability of prosecutors to produce certain intelligence in court, the new rules effectively prohibited people from communicating at all. There seems to have been destructive tension among Justice, the FBI, and the lower FISA court at the time of the 1995 memo, tension that may in the end explain Ms. Gorelick's behavior. But we won't have a clear picture until she and some of the other major players--including members of the FISA court--testify.

The 9/11 Commissioners are only undermining their own credibility in rallying to Ms. Gorelick's defense. Her conflict of interest can't be solved merely by recusing herself from discreet portions of the probe, since as a Commissioner she will still serve as judge and jury on everyone else in government. She should have recused herself entirely from even questioning John Ashcroft. We also take no comfort in Republican Orrin Hatch's endorsement, since one of Ms. Gorelick's former law partners represented him in the BCCI case and he whisked her through Senate confirmation in 1994.

Gorelick Agonistes
Her refusal to resign taints the 9/11 Commission
Saturday, April 24, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
Opinion Journal
wsj.com

e would have it backwards and miss the point entirely if we were to attribute The Gorelick Wall and the attendant metastasis of al Qaeda during the clintons' watch, (which, incidentally, was then in its incipient stage and stoppable), to the '60s liberal mindset.

Rampant '60s liberalism was not the underlying rationale for The Gorelick Wall.

Rather, The Gorelick Wall was the underlying rationale for--The Gorelick Wall was (insofar as '60s liberalism was the Wall's apparent impetus) a cynical cover for --the willful, methodical malpractice and malfeasance that was the product of the virulent clinton strain of rampant '60s liberalism.

While it is true that The Gorelick Wall was the convenient device of a cowardly self-serving president, The Wall's aiding and abetting of al Qaeda was largely incidental, (the pervasiveness of the clintons' Nobel-Peace-Prize calculus notwithstanding).

The Wall was engineered primarily to protect a corrupt self-serving president. The metastasis of al Qaeda and 9/11 were simply the cost of doing business, clinton-style.

Further confirmation of the Wall-as-cover-for-clinton-corruption thesis:

  • Gorelick's failure to disclose the fact that she authored the memo that was the efficient cause of 911
  • Gorelick's surreal presence on the 911 commission investigating Gorelick's Justice Department, a maneuver that effectively removes from the universe of witnesses a central witness, Gorelick, even as it uniquely positions a central player, Gorelick, to directly shape the commission's conclusions. (Is there any question which two people are responsible for Gorelick's insertion on the commission?)

Conversely, that it never occurred to anyone on the commission that Gorelick's flagrant conflict of interest renders her presence on the commission beyond farce calls into question the commission's judgment if not its integrity. Washington's mutual protection racket writ large, I suspect.

The Gorelick Wall is consistent with, and an international extension of, two essential acts committed in tandem, Filegate, the simultaneous empowering of the clintons and disemboweling of clinton adversaries, and the clinton Putsch, the firing and replacement of every U.S. attorney extant.

Filegate and the clinton Putsch,
committed in tandem,
the product of a careful criminal calculus,
at once empowered clinton
and disemboweled his opponents.
clinton was now free to betray with abandon
not only our trust,
but the Constitution as well.

The Common Man
Mia T
February, 1998


Allegations of international clinton crimes swirling around the White House in 1995 and beyond support The-Wall-as-cover-for-international-clinton-crimes thesis.

Once the clintons' own U.S. attorneys were in place, once the opposition was disemboweled by the knowledge that their raw FBI files had been in the possession of the clintons, once domestic law enforcement was effectively blinded to foreign data by Gorelick's Wall, the clintons were free to methodically and seditiously and with impunity auction off America's security, sovereignty and economy to the highest foreign bidder.

COMPLETE ARTICLE


(viewing movie requires Flash Player 6, available HERE)

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Reverse Gorelick
Mia T, 4.15.04


15 posted on 04/24/2004 8:42:15 PM PDT by Mia T (Stop Clintons' Undermining Machinations (The acronym is the message.))
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