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 ...
In debate between gentlemen, only fools express contempt for the contrary position.
Yes. And although it is a given that a person who would fob off his responsibilities into thin airActually, the sigh is not their arguement vis-a-vis the Gorelick memo, which follows, but an expression of their frustration with Bush's New Tone refusal to back up his own people.is no gentleman, that is not entirely true of all who would vote knowingly for such a person. There is a certain detatchment from reality in traditional behavior, and all-too-often voting and political opinions are exactly that rather than expression of rational thought. Although 2/3 of Christian voters voted for Bush, 1/3 of them voted for Gore, and I an friends with such a family. Grandma had a picture of John F. Kennedy over the mantle . . .
- Janet Reno "took responsibility" for Waco - no one was fired or resigned, and no one really blamed Ms. Reno for what happened within a month of her taking office
- Craig Livingstone "was hired" and "was fired" - but no one was responsible for hiring or firing him
- "It depends on the meaning of 'is'"
Ms. Gorelick's memo explicitly ordered seperation of criminal and intelligence information beyond the level mandated by law - explicitly to avoid a future appearance of impropriety. But now that she herself is the subject of an actual appearance of impropriety, her enthusiam for walking the extra mile has vanished and the familiar pettifoggery of the Clinton Administration is on display.
A lot of us are sighing.
35 posted on 05/03/2004 1:37:02 AM EDT by Jeff Chandler
Exactly.
He served on the President's Education Policy Advisory Committee and as chair of the Education Commission of the States and the National Governor's Association Task Force on Teaching. While president of Drew, Kean has served on several national committees and commissions.
Ping to my #61 . . .
Whatever he's afraid is in Hillary's FBI file on him, I hope it at least was fun at the time . . .
I agree. I was surprised to find the information on the newly released documents regarding the Gorelick memo buried in a story last Wednesday. It was from Fox News, and the headline and first part of the article was a preview of the Bush/Cheney meeting to take place the next day with the 9/11 commission. Then it went on to detail the records released that very day by the DOJ. I posted the article with a comment highlighting that new info re: Gorelick was in it and I noted it exposed her as lying in her WaPo op-ed. Yes, she did.
Are you? You are wrong.
Not only that, I have documented that what happened here was the existance of the memo was leaked to the press back in May 2002. Complete with the spin that you gullibly accept without thought or research.
What happened with the leak. Did the administration hide anything? They did not. Dr. Rice held a press briefing and accurately and honestly described the PDB.
National Security Advisor Holds Press Briefing May 16, 2002
Then the next day Ari Fleischer gave the name of the PDB---yes the title that Ben Veniste LIED about from his exalted seat on the commission. He sat there and claimed until he asked for the title and Rice replied, that until that moment it had been secret. A lie.
"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 didnt say yes to this question
The "9/11 Commission" whatever its proper name is - was legally constitutied on the excuse that we should learn from the mistakes that led to the success of the 9/11 attacks, and that a "nonpartisan" commission should make recommendations to improve the government. For the purpose of making recommendations about box-shuffling in the federal bureauocracy, there is absolutely no reason to involve the public with a televised hearing. The trouble is that the "9/11" Commission is actually the Gorelick Commission - it is constituted to see the mote in the eye of the Bush Administration and to be blind to the beam either in the eye of the Clinton Administration or of the eye of Congress.instead, she did all she could to avoid the simple truth. Under oath, she kept avoiding the truth.The "simple question" was a half truth. Ben-Veniste crafted his question to make the president look bad if answered in the simple affirmative as if it were a whole truth. The intelligent and knowledgable would have expected nothing better from the Clinton lawyer and former Watergate prosecutor.
Avoiding the tendentious half truth is no lie.And refusing to "answer yes or no" to the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is not stonewalling.
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