There's some interesting Google info on Mrs. Gorelick and the rest of the commission members, this from Dec, 2002:
911 Commission - Forgedda Boudit
Medium Rare
By Jim Rarey
12-29-2
A cruel sham is being perpetrated on the American public and
especially on the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
One of the expectations of the public is that the Commission
established to investigate the attacks will find out what the
government (in particular intelligence agencies) knew prior to the
attacks. However, both the restrictions on the Commission and the
composition of its members are designed to prevent just that.
The Commission was established by the 2003 Intelligence Authorization
Act (H.R. 4628) to (1) conduct an investigation, (2) identify, review
and evaluate lessons learned, and (3) issue a report to the President
and Congress containing findings, conclusions and recommendations.
While the first part of Section 604 of the Act defining the
Commission's functions appears to give it a broad mandate of areas for
investigation (including intelligence agencies), a following provision
limits its inquiry into the 'intelligence community' to areas not
covered by the 'Joint Inquiry' of Congressional Intelligence
Committees unless there is new information not reviewed by the
congressional investigation.
Commission members and staff will be required to have appropriate
security clearances before they are given access to classified
information. This probably means that any final report to the public
will be 'sanitized' of classified information, as is the report of the
congressional 'Joint Inquiry.' In other words, any meaningful
information the Commission might find (despite the restrictions on it)
will not be made public. Committee staff members are considered
government employees and are subject to severe penalties for leaking
classified information.
Some public hearings may be held but obviously will not deal with
classified information. Each agency furnishing information to the
Commission establishes its own classifications. The Commission can
issue subpoenas for information or compelling testimony but only if at
least six of the ten members approve or both the chairman and vice
chairman approve.
If a subpoena is ignored, a U.S. District Court can issue an order to
comply and if still ignored, cite the person or persons for contempt.
Alternatively, by majority vote the commission can issue a non-binding
request to a U.S. Attorney to bring the matter before a grand jury.
U.S. Attorneys report to the Attorney General, or a subordinate, in
the Department of Justice.
The Commission is required to issue its final report eighteen months
after the authorizing legislation went into effect.
If the limited scope of the commission is not enough, the membership
of the commission virtually guarantees that nothing meaningful will
emerge. In this writers opinion there are three general categories of
persons who should have been excluded from the commission. The first
is anyone who is a member of an organization that advocates abdicating
U.S. sovereignty in favor of governance by a regional or world body.
The premier organization pushing that concept for the last eight
decades is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Members of the CFR
hold a significant number of high-level government positions.
A second category would be anyone who has had involvement with the
'intelligence community.' This would include members of congress who
have been on intelligence committees as well as some private sector
members of advisory boards. The rationale is that those persons likely
have either been co-opted or have become inured to accepting
assertions of intelligence agencies at face value.
The third criterion, which would mostly apply to government officials
and members of congress, is anyone who participated in a cover-up of
illegal activity related to organizations or groups involved in
terrorism or the related activities of drug distribution and money
laundering.
COMMISSION MEMBERS
Thomas Kean
Then let's begin with the chairman of the commission Thomas Kean,
former New Jersey Governor and President of Drew University. When Kean
was appointed to replace severely conflicted Henry Kissinger, he
asserted his only constituency was the students at Drew.
Well, it turns out that is not exactly true. Kean sits on the Board of
Directors of Amerada Hess, one of the world's leading independent oil
and gas companies. The company is coupled with Delta Oil, a Saudi
Arabia company in a joint venture called Delta-Hess. Delta-Hess in
turn is a partner in Azerbaijan with a consortium developing Caspian
Sea oil resources.
Delta Oil is owned by the two Saudi families of Khalid bin Mahfouz and
Mohammed Hussein al Amoudi. Both are alleged to be major financial
backers of Osama bin Laden and have been named in a lawsuit by
families and survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bin Mahfouz is
Osama's brother-in-law. His sister married bin Laden.
Delta-Hess owns 20% of the Azerbaijan consortium. SOCOL, the state
owned Oil Company has 50% and Frontera owns the remaining 30%.
Frontera is headed by Bill White who was Deputy Secretary of Energy in
the first Clinton administration and the architect of Azerbaijans
first Caspian Sea offshore gas and oil consortium. Familiar names
among its Board of Directors and advisors include Lloyd Bentsen,
former Senator and Treasury Secretary and John Deutch, former Director
of the CIA.
Kean also is co-chairman of Homeland Security Project, which had
significant input into the drafting of the Office of Homeland Security
legislation.
The long-time member of the CFR also forgot to mention his role as
general partner in Quad Ventures LLC. Quad is a limited partnership
operating in the $815 billion education industry whose partners
include; Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch Community
Development, Wells Fargo bank and insurance giants Prudential
Financial and Wachovia. Top officials in most of those companies are
also CFR members. Both Citigroup and Morgan Chase are deeply involved
in the Enron scandal. Citigroup received a slap on the wrist when
found to have laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money
which some suspect helped fund terrorism.
Lee Hamilton
Commission vice chairman and former congressman Lee Hamilton was
appointed to replace former senate majority leader George Mitchell
(CFR), who like Kissinger declined to disclose potential conflicts of
interest and resigned. Hamilton, a CFR member since at least 1988, was
chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Select
Intelligence Committee.
In 1987, House Speaker Jim Wright (who later resigned in disgrace)
appointed Hamilton to chair a committee investigating the Iran/Contra
affair. When a question was raised about CIA/Contra drug smuggling,
the response was release by Hamilton of a cursory review that
concluded there was no truth to the charges. The CIA recently released
a report (that received almost no publicity) admitting the drug
connection.
Jamie Gorelick
Considered one of the fifty most powerful women in the country, CFR
member Jamie Gorelick is currently vice-chair of the giant mortgage
lender and insurer Fannie Mae. From March 1994 until she joined Fannie
Mae in May 1997 she was Deputy Attorney General, the number two spot
in Janet Renos Department of Justice.
In May 1995, the Intelligence Community Law Enforcement Policy Board
was established to meet quarterly and discuss mutual concerns of the
Attorney General and Director of Central Intelligence. The board was
co-chaired by Gorelick and DCI George Tenet. Other members included
all of the law enforcement agencies, the Assistant Secretary of State
for Intelligence and Research and the Defense Department General
Counsel.
This is the same time frame (spring of 1995) in which the Philippine
government apprised the FBI, CIA and State Department of Project
Bojinka an Islamic terrorist plot which included hijacking commercial
airlines planes and flying them into the Pentagon, World Trade Center
towers and, several other buildings.
The BCCI scandal involved a number of powerful individuals. Clark
Clifford and Robert Altman were the top two officers in First
American, the new name given Financial General Bankshares when it was
taken over by BCCI (known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals
International in the corridors of Washington) with the help of the
Jackson Stephens/Lippo Worthen Bank and the Rose Law Firm.
First American is said to have been using the notorious PROMIS
software.
When BCCI and First American were exposed, the legal defense team for
Clifford and Altman attracted a bevy of well-known names including
Robert Fiske (later the first 'independent counsel' investigating
Whitewater and Vince Foster's 'suicide'), Robert Bennett (later
attorney for Bill Clinton), and Jamie Gorelick.
In a somewhat related case in 1978, Financial General Bankshares sued
BCCI, two Jackson Stephens' companies (one was Systematics) and a
number of individuals. Two of the attorneys representing Systematics
in the controversy over PROMIS software were Webster Hubbell and
Hillary Rodham.
In 1998, while at Fannie Mae, Gorelick served on Clintons Central
Intelligence National Security Advisory Panel as well as the
President's Review of Intelligence.
Richard Ben-Veniste
Ben-Veniste is a high-visibility Washington attorney and Democrat
power broker. He was Democrat counsel to the Senate Whitewater
investigation where he blocked inquiries about Webster Hubbell's
hiring by the Lippo group and others administered by Truman Arnold.
According to investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker, Ben-Veniste
then turned around and defended Arnold (the man he was supposed to be
investigating) before Ken Starr's Whitewater grand jury, for which he
was roundly criticized.
Hopsicker also reveals that Arnold had furnished a $2 million airplane
to his friend Wally Hilliard for $1. Hilliard, Hopsicker says, owned
the Flight school in Venice, Florida where four of the Islamic
terrorist pilots were trained that flew the suicide missions on 9/11.
Another of Ben-Venistes clients was Barry Seal, the drug running CIA
asset of Iran/Contra and Mena, Arkansas notoriety. In fact, Hopsicker
relates Ben-Veniste told the Wall Street Journal, "I did my part by
launching him (Seal) into the arms of Vice President Bush who embraced
him as an undercover operative."
Fred Fielding
Fielding is another one who has been around the centers of power for a
while on the Republican side. In the Nixon administration he was a
deputy counsel working under John Dean. In the Watergate scandal he
helped his boss (Dean) handle Howard Hunt's safe full of documents.
They wore rubber gloves so as not to leave fingerprints. Fielding was
not one of the twenty or so Nixon associates (including John Dean)
that went to jail over their involvement.
Later Fielding served as White House Counsel to President Reagan. More
recently he was at least partly responsible for getting George W.
Bush's political mentor Karl Rove in hot water over failure to divest
his stock in Intel Corporation valued at over $100,000.
Fielding advised Rove, who was planning to divest all of his stock, to
hold onto it until a 'government certificate of divestiture' could be
obtained. The certificate would have allowed deferral of capital gains
taxes on stock sold. .
While he still held the stock, Rove met with Intel executives and Vice
President Chaney at which a proposed merger with a Dutch company was
discussed. This was a breech of administration ethics rules.
Fielding served on the Bush transition team in early 2001. According
to Clay Johnson, Director of Presidential Personnel and Deputy Chief
of Staff, the Vice President asked Fred Fielding, who had been
President Reagan's counsel, to come in and he volunteered to--as soon
as we had a Cabinet Secretary-to-be, he would sit down with that
person and they'd have a nice little chat for an hour or two. And then
Fred would tell us whether he was confident that there were no
clearance problems or not. If there was something that he thought
might be problematic, he would explore it further, and maybe they had
to go get some information, whatever. Johnson said the process now
takes sixty days.
Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson was the longest serving governor in Illinois history
completing four terms in office leaving in 1991. He is currently
chairman of the large Chicago-based law firm Winston and Strawn. While
he was governor, sensational charges were leveled against him and the
law firm by Chicago author and investigator Sherman Skolnick.
Skolnick claimed that the First National Bank of Chicago had loaned
(Communist) China billions of dollars to be repaid in gold. When China
defaulted on the gold payments, according to Skolnick, the CIA and
bank arranged for massive amounts of high purity heroin to be smuggled
into the U.S. in lieu of the gold payments. Skolnick alleged shipments
came in through Joliet, just south of Chicago, and were supervised by
Thompson and the Winston and Strawn law firm. As with most claims of
CIA involvement in illegal drugs, nothing came of the allegations.
Thompson got caught in the middle of a messy political battle between
outgoing Governor George Ryan and Attorney General Jim Ryan, both
Republicans. Ryan was running against Democrat Rod Blagojevich, the
victor and incoming governor. At the same time AG Ryan was suing
Governor George Ryan over the pardoning of death row inmates.
George Ryan hired former governor Jim Thompson to defend against the
lawsuit.
Blagojevich had railed in his campaign against the 26 years of
Republican corruption and mismanagement. That included 12 of the years
when Thompson was governor. To the astonishment of practically
everyone, Blagojevich appointed Thompson to lead his transition team.
John Lehman
John Lehman is an investment banker who has served in a number of
government positions including as Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to
1987 under President Reagan. His first government job was as special
counsel and senior staff member to Henry Kissinger on the National
Security Council in the Nixon administration.
Lehman currently serves on several boards of directors including those
of Ball Corporation, as chairman of OAO Technology Solutions, Inc. and
his own J.F. Lehman & Company. He is a former chairman of Sperry
Marine and investment banker with Paine Webber. Lehman served 25 years
as a naval aviator in the selected reserves.
Slade Gorton
Slade Gorton is a former senator from the State of Washington. After
he lost his reelection bid in 2000, he joined the Seattle Law firm of
Preston, Gates & Ellis, which specializes in environmental issues.
If jury selection rules were being used, Gorton would probably be
dismissed from consideration for the commission for cause. Two days
after the 9/11 attacks he told a public-television audience there was
nothing government intelligence officials could have done to thwart
the attack, according to the Seattle Times. The Times quotes Gorton as
saying, I doubt we can expect to get too much inside information no
matter what we do.
Gorton served two years on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He says
that experience and his personal friendship with Trent Lott were
responsible for his appointment by Lott.
Tim Roemer
Tim Roemer is a moderate Democrat congressman (at least compared to
the Democrat leadership) who is retiring from Congress at the end of
this year. He was one of the prime movers in the House championing
creation of the Independent Commission. He is credited with bringing
the organization representing survivors and families of victims of the
9/11 attacks into the mix of support for the commission. Roemer is a
member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Max Cleland
Max Cleland is a one-term Senator from Georgia who lost his reelection
bid this year in a close contest. He is a triple amputee from wounds
received in Vietnam.
At the age of 28, Cleland was the youngest person and first Vietnam
veteran elected to the Georgia State Senate. In 1977, he became the
youngest ever head of the Veterans' Administration when appointed by
President Jimmy Carter.
In 1982 Cleland became the youngest person elected as Georgia
Secretary of State. He resigned that position in 1996 to run for the
seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. He was sworn in
as a U.S. Senator in 1997.
Barring (intentional) leaks, we will have to wait another 17 months to
see what the product of the commission will be. By that time the
publics attention will undoubtedly be focused on other things.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.)
Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.
The author is a freelance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a
former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs
administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S.
Constitution.
If you would like to receive Medium Rare articles directly, please
contact the author at
jimrarey@comcast.net. Message 2 in thread
From: Roedy Green (
roedy@mindprod.com)
Subject: Re: 911 Commission - Forgedda Boudit
View this article only
Newsgroups: alt.politics.usa.congress, alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.usa.republicans, alt.politics.democrats.d
Date: 2002-12-31 23:51:47 PST
On 31 Dec 2002 20:01:03 -0800, freethemedia2002@