Posted on 05/02/2004 9:23:49 PM PDT by Elle Bee
Gorelick's Stonewall - Newly released memos contradict her 9/11 Commission assertions ~ WSJ.
REVIEW & OUTLOOKGorelick's Stonewall 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?
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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.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Have you ever heard the phrase, "900 FBI files"?
It's remarkable the way they seem able to hold pretty much any "G"OPer in check, isn't it.
She did all she could to avoid giving your scumbag Ben-Veniste a soundbite for your Democrat Party to shamelessly use in political ads. As you clearly implied, there was no other point to even asking the question. Condi was masterful in playing the game and winning. Tough luck.
Are you a visitor from Planet DUh?
Absolutely nothing since he is sitting beside the MAIN person who should be testifying UNDER OATH IN THE OPEN in front of this so-called commission. If she doesn't NOTHING they say will be taken seriously.
I will decide for MYSELF who I think was to blame for 9/11. That would be someone who was more interested in Monica's underwear than this country. And someone aka "his wife" who was more interested in becoming a senator and eventually president.
They are the most arrogant, self-serving, ignorant, money hungry and power hungry people that I have ever heard of.
Why would ANYONE want to know what Madeline Albright THINKS about how the war is going or how she THINKS we should be running foreign policy (besides Greta)? She screwed it up while she was there, why would I care what she thinks now? If anyone else made such a total mess out of their job I doubt the former employer would call them and ask them how to fix the problem.
That would be what some call "his (Bill Clinton's) wife". She wants to be president some day. Jamie Gorelick was Hillary Clinton's "eyes & ears" at the Justice Dept. and is now her "wall" from blame for 9/11.
It was more important for Hillary's "husband" to get reelected than to protect this country from terrorism. That is also why Jamie Gorelick was involved in TWA 800, Oklahoma City Bombing and many other things that she SHOULD EXPLAIN UNDER OATH. Why does she turn up in everyone of these matters more often than FORREST GUMP?!
Exactly right. Not only would testifying "under oath" have no meaning for a Clintonite Democrat like Gorelick, but can you imagine the pandering tributes and softball questions that her "colleagues" would toss her way if she appeared before them in a witness chair?
Nah. Leave it alone. I'd prefer she NOT testify at this point. Let the whole "9-11 Commission" thing just fade away in ignominy. Gorelick's "testimony" would only serve to prop up the credibility of a coming report that won't deserve any.
Some other expletives would have been much more appropriate, but the WSJ doesn't print those.
Grow up.
How easy could Ben-Veniste have made it? His language was straight from the PDB. The answer was simple. It was YES. But Rice didnt 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.
The answer to Ben-Veniste's question was not "simple," as whoever authored this nonsense you cut-and-pasted wants us to believe. Ben-Veniste's obvious goal in his questioning was to lead Dr. Rice to a sound bite that would have been used by the liberal news media to batter her rhetorically, and she outfoxed him. (Click here for John Armor's excellent analysis of Condi vs. Ben-Ven.) That is why he mischaracterized the content of the memo in all his questions, and so did the person who "dowdified" this particular Ben-Ven question (my bold for the part YOU left out):
Here's Rice's answer, in full:
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 - not historically, but ongoing, along with these numerous full-field investigations against al Qaeda cells - that preparations were being made consistent with hijackings within the United States.
So was Rice being untruthful or deceptive? Let's examine the language of the PDB:
RICE: May I address the question, sir? The fact is that this August 6th PDB was in response to the presidents questions about whether or not something might happen or something might be planned by al Qaeda inside the United States. He asked because all of the threat reporting, or the threat reporting that was actionable, was about the threats abroad, not about the United States.This particular PDB had a long section on what bin Laden had wanted to dospeculative, much of itin 97, 98, that he had in fact liked the results of the 1993 bombing. It had a number of discussions ofit had a discussion of whether or not they might use hijacking to try and free a prisoner who was being held in the United States, Ressam. It reported that the FBI had full field investigations underway. And we checked on the issue of whether or not there was something going on with surveillance of buildings, and we were told, I believe, that the issue was the courthouse in which this might take place.
Commissioner, this was not a warning. This was a historic memohistorical memo prepared by the agency because the president was asking questions about what we knew about the inside.
So, what do we have? After two years, a report that Osama wanted to hijack a plane COULDN'T BE CORROBORATED. The information suggesting that was indeed HISTORICAL.
(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.
Let's continue, this time with the part of the memo Ben-Ven DIDN'T quote, in bold:
Any honest and fair reading of this briefing shows that the most relevent portion regards the current field investigations that were NOT about chasing uncorroborated concerns of skyjacking, but the "other types of attacks" -- traditional explosive attacks on Federal land targets, with the aim of winning the freedom of Islamist icon Sheik Rahman.
(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.
You can choose to make the argument that Dr. Rice's response -- which you didn't publish in your surrogate attack -- wasn't precisely accurate, but what she replied to a clearly partisan prosecutor -- oops, I mean "commissioner" -- was designed to protect the public from Ben-Veniste's attempt to back up Dick Clarke's shameless, bilious, self-promoting sideshow, smearing Rice and the President in the process.
Nice try.
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