Posted on 04/13/2004 10:39:00 PM PDT by joinedafterattack
WASHINGTON, April 13 — Testifying on Tuesday afternoon before the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft said "the single greatest structural cause for Sept. 11 was the wall" in the Justice Department that prevented criminal investigators from communicating freely with intelligence agents.
"Somebody built this wall," Mr. Ashcroft declared. It was established, he said, by a memorandum written in 1995 that he had just declassified.
"Full disclosure," he went on, "compels me to inform you that its author is a member of the commission."
As most people in the hearing room knew, he was referring to Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic member, who has been especially aggressive in questioning Bush administration witnesses. Ms. Gorelick did not respond to Mr. Ashcroft.
From 1994 to 1997, Ms. Gorelick, now a lawyer in private practice, was deputy attorney general under Janet Reno in the Clinton administration.
This is the most direct conflict between the members' responsibilities on the commission and their past positions that has arisen in the public hearings. But all 10 members were once public officials, and all bring some baggage to the proceedings.
All the ex-lawmakers on the commission — former Senators Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Slade Gorton of Washington and former Representatives Lee H. Hamilton and Timothy J. Roemer, both of Indiana — were members of intelligence committees when they were in Congress and had access to classified information about terrorism.
Mr. Roemer was one of the chief sponsors of the legislation that created the commission and has been an outspoken advocate for the families of Sept. 11 victims.
Another panel member, John F. Lehman, a former Navy secretary, served in the Reagan administration alongside two witnesses who testified last month: Richard L. Armitage, now deputy secretary of state, and Richard A. Clarke, the former White House terrorism specialist.
Mr. Hamilton, the commission's vice chairman, served on an earlier panel, the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, which reported that "a direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century."
The Sept. 11 commission's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, worked on national security as part of the Bush transition team before Mr. Bush was inaugurated. In 1995, he wrote a book about German unification with Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser and the chief witness before the commission last week.
During the transition, Mr. Zelikow sat in on a detailed briefing about Al Qaeda from Mr. Clarke. Mr. Zelikow has also been formally interviewed by his own staff about the transition period. He has disqualified himself from participating in any of the commission's work involving the transition.
Mr. Clarke, among other critics, asserts that Mr. Bush's advisers did not take terrorism seriously enough in the early days of his presidency.
But Ms. Gorelick's baggage seems somewhat heavier than the others'. Last week, questioning Ms. Rice, Ms. Gorelick asserted: "We have big systemic problems. The F.B.I. doesn't work the way it should, and it doesn't communicate with the intelligence community."
On Tuesday, Ms. Gorelick did not flinch at Mr. Ashcroft's opening statement. She simply looked up from her notes and stared at him.
When her turn came at the hearing Tuesday morning to question Ms. Reno and Louis J. Freeh, who was director of the F.B.I. when Ms. Gorelick was in the Justice Department, she disqualified herself.
"Because I worked closely with Director Freeh and Attorney General Reno, I've decided not to participate in this questioning at all," Ms. Gorelick said. "As my colleagues know, the vast preponderance of our work, including with regard to the Department of Justice, focuses on the period of 1998 forward, and I have been and will continue to be a full participant in that work."
In the same vein, when she questioned Mr. Ashcroft, she did not mention his testimony about her memorandum. And at the end of the day, she declined to comment to reporters about Mr. Ashcroft's statement.
After the hearing, the commission chairman, Thomas H. Kean, did not seem particularly exercised by Mr. Ashcroft's remarks, but he told reporters he wished the memorandum had been given to the panel earlier.
In an interview in January, Ms. Gorelick, who has been questioned formally by the commission staff about her time in the Justice Department, said potential conflicts and recusals were the price the commission had to pay for having members and staff assistants with extensive experience in national security.
Talk about soft peddling a major turn of events.
Maybe in my lifetime I'll be able to see honest, hardworking, taxpaying citizens chasing those career traitors out of DC with buckets of tar and barrels of feathers.
Maybe.... But I ain't gonna hold my breath.
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