Posted on 04/14/2004 7:20:03 AM PDT by joinedafterattack
In a dramatic moment of his testimony before the 9/11 commission this afternoon, Attorney General John Ashcroft released a previously classified memo from 1995 that instructed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys around the country to ensure they had "walled off" overseas intelligence information from domestic crime-fighters. The separation between overseas intelligence gathering and domestic criminal prosecution has been widely criticized by both Democrats and Republicans on the committee for having helped make the 9/11 attacks possible.
"[T]he simple fact of Sept. 11 is this," Ashcroft testified: "We did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies. Our agents were isolated by government-imposed walls, handcuffed by government-imposed restrictions, and starved for basic information technology. The old national intelligence system in place on Sept. 11 was destined to fail."
Ashcroft went on to explain the "wall" that had been erected between criminal investigators and intelligence agents was "the single greatest structural cause for Sept. 11 [successes by al-Qaeda]." He said, "Government erected this wall. Government buttressed this wall. And before Sept. 11, government was blinded by this wall."
Ashcroft then described the 1995 memo that initially established the wall, which later impeded the investigations of the 9/11 hijackers and their accomplices. When frustrated field agents complained to headquarters about it in August 2001, Justice replied: "'These are the rules.' ... But somebody did make these rules," Ashcroft said. "Someone built this wall."
Then the attorney general dropped his bombshell: "Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission."
The 1995 memo by then Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick - now a member of the 9/11 commission - explains that the new rules dictated by the Clinton administration to separate criminal investigations from intelligence gathering "go beyond what is legally required." The Gorelick rules were meant to ensure that "no 'proactive' investigative efforts or technical coverages" of terrorist suspects be carried out on U.S. soil.
The result of the 1995 Gorelick rules, Ashcroft said, were devastating, and hampered the ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to communicate the identify of two of the 9/11 hijackers to law-enforcement agencies, even after they had entered the United States. That failure specifically contributed to 9/11.
Could it be they feared the people working in law enforcement and the military more than our true enemies? You know, the ones who swore to defend our Republic and its Constitution, the the ones who meant it?
...poor Gorelick (an $hrillary hack); she'll bring $hrillary's name back in the limelight...I expect to see Gorelick, lying dead, @ Fort Marcy Park soon...by the cannon, in an familiar spot.
What was the Church Committee? A bunch of Democrats dedicated to the proposition that Republicans were a danger to civil liberties.
What was that Gorelick memo about? Preventing the appearance of impropriety in the process of investigating terrorist threats.
If Gorelick is half as worried about the "appearance of impropriety" now as she was then, she'll get her sorry behind off the committee and into a witness chair in front of it.
And if the committee is half as worried about affixing responsibility to those who have authority as it is about getting a sound bite for John Kerry's political ambitions, it will report that the Gorelick wrote that memo after the first WTC bombing and that it unnecessarily hindered the investigation of terrorists. The Democrats look at that August PDB and proclaim that "Bush knew." They look at the Gorelick memo and the cat has their tongue.
The Gorelick memo is a smoking gun, nothing less.
Maybe the women has done a good job on the commissionMaybe you haven't read this line in the Gorelick memo:
These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.It was Ashcroft and not Gorelick who revealed the memo to the committee; Ashcroft testified that failure to comply with this memo, requiring that the left hand of the FBI not know what the right hand was doing, was known as a "career ender" within the Bureau.
Gorelick's "profile in courage" memo cost four airliners, the twin towers, a wing of the Pentagon, and three thousand lives. Far more surely than anything else the committee is likely to find.
I await your explanation as to how the author of that memo could possibly be helping it find the truth if she did not disclose that memo while the committee was spending endless hours trying to find out the causes of the intelligence failure of 911.
The result of the 1995 Gorelick rules, Ashcroft said, were devastating, and hampered the ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to communicate the identify of two of the 9/11 hijackers to law-enforcement agencies, even after they had entered the United States. That failure specifically contributed to 9/11.
Well, well, well. How about Ms. GWhorelick getting off the 9/11 commission and in hot seat for a while. This should be consiered treason.
What did Hillary know, and when did she know it? Its time to connect some dots...
This Gorelick scenario is prime evidence of how the appalling choices of GOP 911 commissioners is coming back to bite us you know where.
We're going to have to keep the pressure on this Clintonista woman ourselves, folks. Don't depend on the commission.
Thank God for the courage of John Ashcroft the other day. He didn't look at all recovered from his surgery yet, but he had the most steely look on his face as he forcefully came right out with the truth.
Leni
I went to high school with Hubert Green. Hubert came from "old money", but Dr. Green taught his sons well. There was not an arrogant bone in Hubert's body. He treated everyone with respect, including those of us from the other side of the tracks.
IME, arrogance is not limited to "bluebloods". Often, the biggest snobs are those with new found wealth. They suddenly become too good to breath the same air.
Maybe it was not Kean's arrogance than overwhelmed me. Maybe, it was the stupidity of telling the rest of us to butt out, on national TV. A sound bite he will rue. Kean assassinated his own character.
There is something more than "funny" going on here. This is a deliberate coverup of something much larger than 911, if that is possible.
Two questions concerning Gorelick that need to be answered:
1. How did she get on this Commission? She didn't just fall down from Heaven. Somebody wanted her there and put her there. Why?
2. Why did Gorelick institute the "wall" memorandum? Was she ordered to do it (and who ordered it) or did she do it on her own. Either way, there was a real motivation behind it. Get to the bottom of this and the 911 Omission will have the answer to it's questions on the "why" 911 happened,... not that it really wants to uncover any deep truths.
IMHO, this was a setup by the clintons to cover their criminality in other areas and prevent our own intelligence and investigative agencies from either connecting the dots or prosecuting their blatant criminality often disguised as incompetence. One need only start naming off events of those days to see why,... Waco, Whitewater, Mena Airport, Vince Foster, Oklahoma City, the Riadys, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung, Wen ho Lee, the looting of Los Alamos secrets, Ron Brown, China money, LORAL, Livermore Labs and the loss of W-88 nuclear warhead designs, etc. etc., ... what was there that needed "covering up" in those days that required both eyes to be gouged from the FBI and CIA?
Looking for unconnected dots and and asking why the lines weren't connected? Well, there are lots of dots to connect, but no way to connect them if connecting them is prohibited. This was not a "unfortunate" slip-up. It was deliberate policy by deliberate people for deliberate reasons.
The fact terrorists finally slipped through the broken net and caused 911 is only a side and final result of the vast and sinister Clinton Legacy. The 911 dots all emanated from this, and the keystone of the plot has been outed by Ashcroft.
We are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ trolls, terrorists, democrats and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!
You keep up the good work!
Your post makes no sense. What are you trying to say?
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