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

The Wall Street Journal. ^ | May 3,2004 | WSJ. ED Board

[Elle Bee]

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?

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[Elle Bee]

Click Logo to go to:

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[woofie]

Gorelick lied!!!!!

[rogueleader]

Any article that uses the word "sigh" as an argument gets an automatic skip the whole thing from me.

[TheEaglehasLanded]

Just more typical Democrat BS, go to their civil right groups and say look what we did for you. Then when people die say well Republicans didn't break the law to protect you even though we would have wanted them prosecuted had they broken it.

[Elle Bee]

that's an enviable standard ... not

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[Marak]

Guess you will never know what you missed.

[Smartass]

[MamaLucci]

The *sigh* isn't their argument, it is, rather, their reaction
to having to even MAKE an argument regarding Gorelick's
blatant conflict of interest.

[AirBorn]

If nothing is wrong? So then...Gorelick should tesify.

Like on that bill signed by all the Republican Senators demanding that full disclosure be made by EVERYBODY and ANYBODY that has any POSSIBLE information---If any EXTRA information could be added to the report to help PREVENT any chance at any FUTURE roadblocks/situations that could could hurt getting the security we need--why not tesify??

Oh!!--there WAS NO BILL signed by ANY REPUBLICANS Senators--like there WOULD BE IF IT WAS A REPUBLICAN holding stuff back!!- after finding out Gorelick could have had ANY involvement in hurting security efforts???

Some other poster--probly alot more intelligent than me posted this http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/parodies/what_wall.jpg

What are we now?--we don't charge people with anything if they stand by and say nothing if they saw a crime being commited and don't owe up to it?
or, do we put them on the JURY of the person who got CAUGHT doing that crime?

I don't know!

[MEG33]

FYI

[nopardons]

Then you don't belong here,newbie.

[Alia]

ROFL! That gif is A KEEPER! :)

[rogueleader]

"The *sigh* isn't their argument"

At this moement I will refrain from the thing that I hate.

Yes, the sigh is their argument!

I do realize that rhetoric is no longer considered a proper subject of youth, but this takes the cake. Are you truly that unfamiliar with what an argument is? The argument is not just the logical bits, it is also the emotional bits that stir the reader/audience to agree with the writer/speaker.

The sigh is used to express utter devastation at another's incomprehension of basic facts that all are presumed to understand. The purposeful sigh is heinous, whether written or spoken, not only because it nets so many weak-minded people into believing an argument that is not necessarily worthy of such belief, but more importantly because it expresses sheer contempt for the contrary position.

In debate between gentlemen, only fools express contempt for the contrary position. In that they express contempt all the time, liberals are showing themselves to be full of crap. I have been deeply impressed by the high level of logical thought that goes on here at FR. Surely FR is better than the venial tactic of the sigh.

The sigh is commonly used at muddleheaded sites like Slashdot and DU where misspellings, flagrant grammar errors, and dodgy argument are the rule.

Let us not fall into the same hellish pit. Let us not stoop so low as to use the sigh when making arguments.

[AirBorn]

I am still wondering: if george Bush supposedly picked the 5 members he wanted on, and Datchell picked the five from the Democrats he wanted on--wasn't there a "sit-Down" to discuss the picks by the two BEFORE the Comm. started this whole thing?

[nopardons]

Not really. The president wanted Kissinger to run things/be the commission's chairman.That got scotched pretty quickly by the Dems.

[ScaniaBoy]

Good to see that WSJ still keeps up the pressure on the Commission.

In my view one of the most important recent revelations regarding the memo is the fact that Ms Gorelick in probability lied when she stated in her op-ed piece that it was written to protect the prosecution in the two anti-terrorist trials at the time.

In a rebuttal former chief assistant U.S. attorney in NY Andrew C. McCarthy wrote (The Wall Truth: Gorelick provides the clearest proof yet that she should resign., Posted on 04/19/2004 9:57:46 AM EDT by xsysmgr):

By the time she penned her March 1995 memo, the first World Trade Center bombing prosecution had been over for a year and my case was in its third month of trial.

The only conceivable threat to eventual convictions would have been (a) if the prosecutors and agents in my case had learned information about defense strategy by virtue of the government's continuing investigation of some of our indicted defendants for possible new crimes; or (b) if the continuing investigation had turned up exculpatory information about the defendants in my case and I had not been told about it so I could disclose it. Far from being unique to national-security matters, that situation is a commonplace when the government deals with violent organizations (which tend to obstruct justice and routinely plot to kill or influence witnesses, prosecutors, and/or jurors, thus requiring continuing investigations even as already indicted cases proceed).

To avoid constitutional problems in such a situation, the government regularly assigns a prosecutor and agent who are not involved in the already indicted case to vet information from the continuing investigation before it is permitted to be communicated to agents and prosecutors on the indicted case. This way, the team on the indicted case learns only what it is allowed to know (viz., evidence of new crimes the defendants have committed), but not what it should not know (viz., defense strategy information and incriminating admissions about the indicted case made without the consent of counsel); and the government maintains the ability to reveal any exculpatory information (as federal law requires). As Gorelick's 1995 memorandum recounts, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York had already made sure that was done in my case long before Gorelick's memo.

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.

[kcvl]

Attention: Thomas Kean


info@9-11Commission.gov

[ScaniaBoy]

PING!

More to be added to the Gorelick file.

[rogueleader]

Do you like the taste when you eat your own?

[MEG33]

Good Grief!..Oh,please!....SIGH...PIFFLE!