Gorelick's Stonewall - Newly released memos contradict her 9/11 Commission assertions ~ WSJ.

REVIEW & OUTLOOKGorelick's Stonewall
Newly released memos contradict her 9/11 Commission assertions.

Monday, May 3, 2004 12:01 a.m.

So President Bush and Vice President Cheney had their long-awaited sit-down with the 9/11 Commission last week--an event the Commissioners took so seriously that two of them walked out early citing prior commitments. Meanwhile, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan says the President disapproved of the Justice Department's release last week of further memos relating to the pre-Patriot Act "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement.

Sigh. We hope Mr. Bush is merely trying to rise above the partisanship that has surrounded the Commission since its grandstanding over Richard Clarke and Condoleezza Rice. Because what John Ashcroft and his team have revealed about the wall is by far the most important thing to come out of the hearings so far. So long as the 9/11 Commissioners are refusing to probe this matter further for fear of damaging a colleague, someone has to look out for the public's right to know.

Readers will recall that in his testimony Attorney General Ashcroft declassified a March 1995 memo written by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick--then Deputy Attorney General--instructing federal prosecutors and the FBI director to go "beyond what the law requires" in limiting their cooperation. Ms. Gorelick has since responded that she played only a subordinate role in setting this policy, and was only implementing settled law in any case. But the newly released memos appear to contradict Ms. Gorelick on both counts, further strengthening the case for having her resolve the issue in testimony and under oath.

A key piece of evidence is a June 13, 1995 memo to Attorney General Janet Reno from Mary Jo White, then U.S. Attorney and lead World Trade Center bombing prosecutor, and a recipient of the March memo Mr. Ashcroft referenced: "You have also asked whether I am generally comfortable with the instructions. It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney's Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required."

Ms. White added: "Our experience has been that the FBI labels of an investigation as intelligence or law enforcement can be quite arbitrary depending upon the personnel involved and that the most effective way to combat terrorism is with as few labels and walls as possible so that wherever permissible, the right and left hands are communicating" (emphases added).

Then Ms. White asked for a number of changes to the proposed guidelines, most of which Gorelick subordinate Michael Vatis recommends rejecting in a June 19 memo to Ms. Reno. That memo is accompanied by a handwritten note from Ms. Gorelick saying that she concurs.

Or to sum up the exchange: The principal U.S. terrorism prosecutor was trying to tell her boss that she foresaw a real problem with the new and "not legally required" wall policy, but Ms. Reno--again delegating that policy to Ms. Gorelick--largely rebuffed her concerns.

Commission Chairman Tom Kean has thus far been a staunch defender of Ms. Gorelick's refusal to testify. Perhaps he can explain how all of the above squares with Ms. Gorelick's recent remarks on CNN that "The wall was a creature of statute. It's existed since the mid-1980s. And while it's too lengthy to go into, basically the policy that was put out in the mid-'90s, which I didn't sign, wasn't my policy by the way, it was the Attorney General's policy . . ."

We've never expected much from this Commission, but the stonewalling is getting ridiculous. Everyone knows the wall contributed to serious pre-9/11 lapses, such as the FBI's failure to search "20th Hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui's hard drive following his arrest on immigration violations in August 2001. Yet the Commissioners are treating reasonable requests that they explore the wall fully as some sort of affront.

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald summed up the core issue last October in testimony to Congress: "I was on a prosecution team in New York that began a criminal investigation of Osama bin Laden in early 1996. . . . We could talk to local police officers. We could talk to other U.S. government agencies. We could talk to foreign police officers. Even foreign intelligence personnel. . . . But there was one group of people we were not permitted to talk to. Who? The FBI agents across the street from us in lower Manhattan assigned to a parallel intelligence investigation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. We could not learn what information they had gathered. That was 'the wall.' "

That's also what the 9/11 Commissioners now seem determined to ignore. How long will they continue protecting their colleague at the cost of their own credibility?

I think I remember about mr. Kissinger ---the ink wasn't even dry yet on the list when the Democrats jumped with about 50 objections to his possible conflict of interests--which I had heard HE was already aware of--so...
what happened to the REPUBLICAN WATCHERS who are suppose to be LOOKING at these things??

I look and see that if George Bush farts--there are a 100 cameras there and a million objections by the left--

so HOW did Gorelick get a FREE BUS RIDE by being ALLOWED to be put on the panel-

Where were the "Watchers" who should have been looking to see that this was happening is all I ask.

I'm sorry--too much Monday Morning Quarter-backing--but seems to happen a LOT the past years!!

Am I just losing Faith the the Republican party isn't as Pro-active as it use to be??

I may only be just finishing High School--but at least sometimes I feel that I GET MORE INVOLVED in trying to know what's going on!! And I have homework every night--I don't spend my nights in 100$ a plate dinners on tax payers expense!!--when my Republicans reps should be the ones on the ball.

Questions for CONDI...

When the White House finally released the text of that August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing, we finally saw what Bush was told about the ongoing threat from al Qaeda. And we learned more about a serious problem—a problem that doesn’t seem to abate. We learned more about the endless dissembling of Condoleeza Rice.

What was Bush told about al Qaeda? Before we can see how Rice dissembled before the 9/11 commission, we need to know what was in Bush’s briefing. With that in mind, here are the final five paragraphs of the 11-paragraph memo:

PRESIDENTIAL BRIEFING, 8/6/01: (pgh 7) Al Qaeda members—including some who are U.S. citizens—have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks….
(8) A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

(9) We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [REDACTED] service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

(10) Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

(11) The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

As the White House has noted, nothing in the briefing referred to the use of airplanes as weapons. Nor did the briefing specifically describe what would happen on September 11. No “silver bullet” was provided--no specific description of the 9/11 plan. The CIA didn’t know about the plan, and didn’t describe it for Bush.

But the CIA actually DID say several things about ongoing al Qaeda operations. According to the briefing, al Qaeda members had “resided in the U.S. for years.” Al Qaeda “apparently maintained a support structure that could aid [domestic] attacks.” And since 1998, FBI information had “indicated patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.” According to the briefing, the FBI was conducting seventy “full-field investigations” in the US that were bin Laden-related.

When Rice appeared before the 9/11 commission she was asked about this briefing—and that’s when the trouble began.

To cite one example, commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste devoted the bulk of his time to questions about this PDB. Some of his questions were very straightforward, and should have been quite easy to answer. But these questions did not produce straightforward answers. In fact, Rice’s answers to these questions were notably evasive. Some of them bordered on lies.

Just how easy were the questions? About halfway through his session with Rice, Ben-Veniste asked this:

BEN-VENISTE: I am asking you whether it is not the case that you learned in the PDB memo of August 6th that the FBI was saying that it had information suggesting…that preparations were being made consistent with hijackings within the United States.

Geeze Louise! For a brilliant academic like Rice, that should have been very simple! Just how easy was that question? Why, Ben-Veniste had restated language straight from the briefing itself! Let’s recall the text of the PDB, then compare it to his question:

PRESIDENTIAL BRIEFING, 8/6/01: FBI information since [1998] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Now, let’s again recall Ben-Veniste’s question:

"I am asking you whether it is not the case that you learned in the PDB memo of August 6th that the FBI was saying that it had information suggesting…that preparations were being made consistent with hijackings within the United States.

"Did the PDB suggest that 'preparations were being made consistent with hijackings within the United States?'

How easy could Ben-Veniste have made it? His language was straight from the PDB. The answer was simple. It was YES.
But Rice didn’t say “yes” to this question; instead, she did all she could to avoid the simple truth. Under oath, she kept avoiding the truth. And our transparently liberal press has no plan to say so.

Why in God's name?

What remains is the very important question why she penned the memo at that time? That question Ms Gorelick should have to answer under oath.

ISTM that there's always the possiblity that "the wall" was crucial to protecting some "FOB" who would have been in a world of hurt if not for its protection. Of course, given Slick's nature, any protection extened to a "FOB" would likely have been done for the underlying goal of protecting Slick himself.

I wonder if his pal Marc Rich was up to his elbows in more than "oil for food"?

Of course, it might not be something like that. It might be something even worse. :)

Seriously, though, what do we know? It looks like "the wall" was maintained at all costs by the Clinton Regime. Presumably, if this is the case, it wasn't for no reason. And I can't bring myself to think that the reason was altruistic, i.e., "in the national interest", for two reasons. One, on face value, it seems counter to the national interest, and two, if there was a good reason to maintain it at all costs, surely someone would know what the reason was!

So, that IMO brings us back to Clinton, with the question being what was he using "the wall" to protect?

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