Drama to Hearings By Jeff Gannon
Talon News
April 13, 2004
WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- The American Spectator reported Monday that Republican staffers on the 9/11 Commission are "looking for a way to place commission member Jamie Gorelick before the body she sits on to explain the Clinton Justice Department's seeming lack of interest in counterterrorism activities." Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general under Janet Reno was a significant participant in making policies that directly affected counterterrorism efforts during the 1990s.
In May 1995, the Washington Post reported, "Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick yesterday said the Clinton administration planned to drop its proposal to give the president absolute power to designate groups as terrorist organizations."
At issue was the Clinton administration's proposed counterterrorism legislation that would prohibit Americans from raising funds to support groups classified by the president as terrorist organizations. The original bill would not have allowed court challenges to the president's designations.
In her testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime Gorelick said, "We will recommend deletion of the assertions in that bill that the president's designations are unreviewable or conclusive."
Gorelick told reporters at the time that criticism from civil liberties groups convinced administration officials that the ban on court challenges was not necessary.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh appears before the commission Tuesday, and will likely face questions from Gorelick.
Freeh may have some questions of his own for her. He wrote an op-ed piece published in Monday's Wall Street Journal where he points out that in September 1994, he "recommended to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick that the DoJ strengthen investigative powers against suspected 'undesirable aliens,' accelerating deportation appeal proceedings and limiting U.S. participation in a visa waiver pilot program under which 9.5 million foreigners entered the U.S. in 1994. I also recommended that we include provisions for the detention and removal of undesirable aliens, under a special, closed-court procedure."
Freeh also said that he criticized alien deportation appeal procedures that often took years to conclude and recommended legislation to provide the FBI with roving wiretap authority to investigate terrorist activities in the U.S. one of his recommendations to Gorelick were acted upon.
Instead the deputy attorney general was assigned to Clinton's Citizenship USA program. Former Justice Department investigator David Schippers wrote in his 1999 book, "Sell Out" that it was Gorelick's task to expedite new rules under which criminal background checks were suspended for new immigrants.
The apparent conflict of interest will take on a deeper sense of irony when former Attorney General Janet Reno appears before the panel the same day as Freeh. Few would suggest that she would press her former boss to explain the failures of the department of which she herself played a key role.
In 1994, Reno's Justice Department adopted new rules that prohibited the FBI or the CIA from contacting prosecutors in the Internal Security Section of the DoJ. FBI agent Colleen Rowley called these rules a "bureaucratic roadblock" that hampered the investigation of Zaccarias Moussaoui prior to September 11, 2001.
According to The American Spectator, Republican staffers who say that several commissioners are outraged at the continued leaks by its Democratic members will scrutinize Gorelick's performance. They believe the leaks are being coordinated to embarrass upcoming members of the Bush administration set to testify before the commission.
The staffers point out that their Democratic counterparts leaked a memo last week that showed the Bush Justice Department did not have terrorism on its list of seven top priorities, which included corporate fraud prosecutions and civil rights protections. But what was not disclosed is that outgoing Attorney General Janet Reno set those priorities. The list reflected priorities that were put in place by Gorelick in her time at the Department.
The American Spectator quotes a Republican staffer saying, "[Gorelick] knows better than anyone about what was going on at Justice in the later days of the Clinton Administration. She had close ties there."
The staffer added, "In closed-door meetings, she has defended the Clinton people. How can they claim that Ashcroft and his people could do much of anything six weeks into moving into the building?"
"Gorelick should be testifying during these hearings; she should not be up there creating the appearance she played no role in what happened on 9/11, because she definitely did," says the staffer. "The Clinton folks had eight years to do something about Bin Laden. They did nothing. The Bush people had eight months. You'd think judging by the hearings that it was the other way around."<.B>
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Freeh also said that he criticized alien deportation appeal procedures that often took years to conclude and recommended legislation to provide the FBI with roving wiretap authority to investigate terrorist activities in the U.S. None of his recommendations to Gorelick were acted upon.