NPR Ties the Right & Limbaugh to Death Threats Against Gorelick (TOTENBERG TRANSCRIPT)

MRC ^ | 12:05pm EDT, Wednesday April 21, 2004 | BRENT BAKER, KEN SHEPHERD

[fight_truth_decay]

Conservatives in general, and conservative radio talk show hosts in particular, are responsible for causing death threats against 9-11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick?

NPR's Nina Totenberg sure seemed to imply so in a Monday Morning Edition story, which Rush Limbaugh highlighted on his radio show on Tuesday.

CUT

NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports."

Totenberg began: "Jamie Gorelick served for three years as Deputy Attorney General in the first term of the Clinton administration. In Washington, she has a reputation as a smart administrator with a cool head. But she admits she lost some of that cool last Friday."

Jamie Gorelick, 9/11 Commission member: "Someone called the house and threatened to blow it up, and blow me up."

Totenberg: "FBI agents were soon swarming over Gorelick's house and office. She had received hate mail at the office, she says, as have other commissioners, but it had suddenly intensified."

Gorelick: "After John Ashcroft testified, there was an escalation."

Totenberg: "Ashcroft, himself under fire from the 9/11 Commission, in prepared testimony blamed a policy of the Clinton administration for 9/11."

Attorney General John Ashcroft at hearing: "The single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem was the wall that segregated, or separated, criminal investigators and intelligence agents."

Totenberg: "The wall, he said, had been created in a Clinton Era-memorandum."

Ashcroft: "Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the Commission."

Totenberg: "The member, of course, was Jamie Gorelick. Within 48 hours, House GOP leader Tom DeLay and House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner were calling for Gorelick's resignation. And conservative talk shows were taking up the battle cry."

Rush Limbaugh on his radio show: "Who are the Clinton people, who were they, Jamie Gorelick, Clinton, Gore, all these people? They are '60s relics. These are people who grew up hating the FBI. These are the people who gave law enforcement the name pigs. And they now are in charge of it when Clinton assumes office. Now what's the first thing they do? Handcuff the FBI."

Totenberg: "In fact, however, by all independent accounts, the wall was not created during the Clinton administration but by the Reagan and first Bush administrations in the 1980s in response to court rulings. Those court rulings sought to ensure that wiretaps justified as necessary to gather intelligence were not used to circumvent the Constitution's demand for a tougher standard in prosecuting a criminal case. David Kris, a career Justice Department prosecutor who served as Associate Deputy Attorney General for three years under John Ashcroft says the Department struggled with the wall for decades, and indeed the Bush Administration, when it came to office, reexamined and reaffirmed Gorelick's memo."

David Kris: "You have to live with the law as you find it, unless you are able to change it."

Totenberg: "Ironically, says Kris, Gorelick's memo sought in some respects, to bridge the wall."

Kris: "You have somebody at least straddling the wall."

Totenberg: "The Gorelick memo came in response to a particular problem. The prosecutors in the first World Trade Center bombing case thought they could not pass on information to the intelligence investigators looking for more plots. Jamie Gorelick."

Gorelick: "And so the, the goal was to preserve the conviction, to make sure the terrorists didn't go free, and at the same time make sure that the intelligence information got from the criminal side of the house to the intelligence side of the house. I told the intel side of the house, you can wiretap criminal defendants."

Totenberg: "Even after 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, the Bush administration was unable to tear down the wall until it appealed to a special appeals court that had been authorized by law in 1978, but never before convened. In 2002, that court said that the Justice Department and the lower courts had been wrong since the early 1980s in erecting the law. As for Jamie Gorelick, she says she has no more conflict of interest on the 9/11 Commission than any other member, most of whom, she notes, were chosen precisely because of their experience in the intelligence field."

Gorelick: "I'm recused from anything that occurred during my tenure."

Totenberg: "On the question of the wall, she says, she has in fact been a witness and been interviewed. Her fellow commissioners, including the Republican Chairman Tom Kean, have forcefully defended her. And privately some believe she's been targeted because she's the work horse of the commission. Indeed, when the White House told the commissioners only one of them could review the President's Daily Briefings, the commissioners, Republicans and Democrats alike, chose Gorelick. Gorelick admits the last few days have been rough."

Gorelick: "The notion that someone would blow me up, blow up my children, blow up my house, that's scary to any human being."

Totenberg: "But she says she will not quit."

Gorelick: "I don't think the Commission should be intimidated. Then it would be a mistake for any one of us to be forced off the Commission. I think it would be terrible."

Totenberg: "Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington."

Of course, faithful CyberAlert readers will recall that Totenberg issued a death threat of her own a few years ago against Senator Jesse Helms.

[adam_az]

GORELICK HERSELF wrote in the memo that her policy went beyond what was required by law and a court ruling! She's spinning.

Also, she works for a law firm which is defending a Saudi against lawsuits from 9/11 survivors and families.

Also, she WORKED WITH AND FOR Richard Clarke on the Cyberterror Taskforce yet didn't recuse herself.


SHE MUST RESIGN!

[ReleaseTheHounds]

Even Nina's rabid defense (I use rabid because Nina is a DOG)

Dog, indeed... If you live in the Washington, DC area, there's a show on the local CBS affiliate station on Saturdays (Inside Washington) that is sometimes good. It's moderated by the faithful liberal local news anchor (Gordon Peterson) with guest analysts: Nina Totenberg, Jack Germond, Evan Thomas and Charles Krauthammer -- so as you can see, based on "weighted intelligence" is pretty well balanced but favoring Charles by quite a margin, actually. It is fun watching him make mince-meat out of Nina the Dog and Fat Jack to over-the-hill bag-of-barf.

[DBrow]

btt

[Cubs Fan]

NPR is responsible for democrat death threats to Rumsfeld

[CyberCowboy777]

Ping for the NPR tax dollar protection plan.

[Congressman Billybob]

Nina Totenberg is, of course, an incompetent reporter and a political bigot. In short, she's not very different from 99.44% of the staff of the New York Times. To that extent and because of the First Amendment, I have no quarrel with the lady's work.

However, since she works for National "People's" Radio, her salary is paid, in part, by my tax dollars. So at that point I DO have a quarrel with the lady's work.

And as for the separation between law enforcement (FBI) and national security (CIA), a competent reporter would know that it dates back to 1947 when the CIA was created. With the lesson of the German Gestapo clearly in mind, Congress deliberately chose NOT to create a new organization that could go anywhere and do anything in the name of national security.

Of course, the Gorelick memo itself makes it clear that Totenberg is a dishonest reporter. This report claims that Gorelick was creating a "bridge" that would cure this problem, as opposed to a higher "wall" that would make it worst. The text that Gorelick wrote made it clear that it created a "greater" barrier than what the law required.

I spit on Gorelick, Totenberg and NPR -- figuratively, of course.

Congressman Billybob

Click here, then click the blue CFR button, to join the anti-CFR effort (or visit the "Hugh & Series, Critical & Pulled by JimRob" thread). Please do it now.

[Eva]

Jamie Gorelick is on the 9/11 Commission for the sole purpose of cleaning up the Clinton record on terrorism and making sure that Bush gets the blame, not for the benefit of John Kerry, but for the benfit of Hillary. My guess is that Gorelick is Hillary's plant.

[AndrewC]

Of course, the Gorelick memo itself makes it clear that Totenberg is a dishonest reporter.

She's betting most people who would listen to her can't read. She is probably right.

Your comments on the memo are quite correct. The reason for the memo is not to initiate intelligence gathering nor promote it, but to control its potential impact on the legal cases in either effect or appearance of effect.

[ApesForEvolution]

With no help from anybody I determined that I wouldn't urinate on the gorelicker if she were burning to death. She is hiding on the 9-11 Commission in open daylight, thinking she and the Klintoon Admin will be saved their real legacy...islamocommiefascism.

[ApesForEvolution]

Totenberg ain't worth the air she breathes and the space she occupies...

[John Lenin]

The whole 9/11 commision is a farce. Any report they release will be a farce too. The only good thing to come out of it is that Bush's numbers went up the last few weeks. Keane is just as dirty as Gorelick with Hess oil connections to Saudi Arabia. This was a bad idea from the start, thank god it backfired on the RATS.

[MplsSteve]

How in the hell does Nina Totenberg keep a job as a "journalist"?

At least some left-of-center journalist make a hafl-assed attempt to camouflage their ideology.

I'm convinced that if she were a reporter for a TV or radio station other than NPR, that she'd have been shown the door a long time ago.

[Feiny]

I am so tired of liberals crying 'death threat" every time their rump is getting roasted. The will never do the honorable thing...they always throw a temper tantrum. The media enables their behavior.

If Gorelick were a republican, she would have already been kicked off the commission due to the endless moaning of the TV talking heads. But, there is no media bias, right?

[mware]

Interesting and who is to blame for saying that Rumsfeld should be put against a wall and pull the trigger????

[Snardius]

You can't get the real flavor of this story without a picture of Ms. Totenberg.

[Snardius]

My guess is that Gorelick is Hillary's plant.

You can take that to the bank.

[BushisTheMan]

Yeah, I also wondered how the protesters got Karl Rove's personal home address for their trampling of his lawn.

And how the anti-war protesters got Rumsfield's home information in New Mexico.

They must be fed that info by the DNC because I know war protesters are as dumb as they look.

[BushisTheMan]

You know, Jamie, if this story were actually true, you could call the FBI and they could trace the call. If the call was placed from anything other than a pay phone, they could catch the person making the terroristic threats against you.

Except there's this durn wall between the FBI and the CIA. So, if it is a terrorist out to blow you up, then unfortunately, the FBI can't help you....

[Freedom4US]

NPR skirted the issue entirely. In a nation of hundreds of millions, there are going to be a couple kooks, from all sides of the political spectrum. What was not addressed is the near fatal blow to the public's perception of the 9-11 commission - and NPR and Mrs. Totenburg should understand as well as anyone that oftentimes perception is reality. What's implied, but never said - is that despite the enormous public outcry for her to step down on the part of the citizenry, one death threat somehow negates this.

In other words, simply because she received a death threat, this somehow absolves her from the clear conflict of interest. Pure logical fallacy and rather cheesy at that.

[Drango]

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