Posted on 05/03/2004 9:35:27 AM PDT by pookie18
On Jamie Gorelick, the Washington press corps, which is normally energized by any effort by a Republican administration to suppress information, sees Attorney General John Ashcroft as the one who should be chided for releasing memos which show how U.S. Attorneys in 1995 were upset by how guidelines written by then-Deputy Attorney General Gorelick, preventing the CIA from informing domestic agencies about terrorists inside the U.S., went beyond what was legally required and hamstrung efforts to prevent terrorism. Gorelick is now on the 9-11 Commission.
At the start of President Bush’s meeting with the commission on Thursday, he reportedly expressed his disappointment with the release of the documents embarrassing to Gorelick.
Friday night on PBS’s Washington Week, Michael Duffy, Time magazine’s Washington Bureau Chief, expressed disdain for Ashcroft’s efforts to reveal information as Duffy failed to event tell viewers what Ashcroft uncovered: “The day before Bush and Cheney met with the commission, he put another document on the Web site. And this was sort of just kind of sticking it in her face, and even the Bush administration, the White House said the next day that’s just, they had no business doing that.” Showing no interest in pursuing the matter, Duffy characterized the memos as “off the point” and lamented how they are “still on the Web site.”
The Friday, April 30 CyberAlert recounted: On Wednesday, the Justice Department released memos showing that in 1995 U.S. Attorneys objected to Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick’s guidelines about barring the CIA from sharing information related to terrorists inside the U.S. But not a syllable aired about the subject Wednesday night on the ABC, CBS, CNN, CNBC or NBC evening newscasts, and all the morning shows avoided the topic on Thursday morning. On Thursday night, in the wake of the White House rebuking Justice for posting the documents, ABC, CNN, CNBC and NBC all ran brief mentions of that, but none let viewers in on what the memos revealed. CBS didn’t utter a word about Gorelick, but like NBC, found time to highlight how Paul Bremer hit the administration, back in February of 2001, for being inattentive to terrorism. And Dan Rather sermonized about how “it was only under pressure that President Bush finally agreed to the formation of the independent commission and only under pressure that he finally appeared before it today -- under his ground rules, on his ground.” Of ABC, CBS and NBC, only ABC’s Terry Moran pointed out how two commissioners walked out early.
For details about all of that, as well as for links to earlier CyberAlert items about media avoidance of questions about Gorelick: www.mediaresearch.org
Friday night on PBS, New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse proposed: “One thing that was strange this week was this back and forth between the White House and the Justice Department, the White House telling the Justice Department to back off on accusing Jamie Gorelick of having set policy in motion that was harmful to national security. What was that all, why aren’t they playing out of the same play book there?” Moderator Gwen Ifill: “Jamie Gorelick, just to explain, is one of the Democratic members of the Commission and former Clinton administration official.” Duffy answered, as taken down by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: “In the Justice Department. Well, the whole Gorelick-Ashcroft thing is kind of the McGuffin in this Hitchcock movie. It keeps coming back, but I’m not sure it’s really significant. When Gorelick, when Ashcroft had gone to testify a few weeks ago, he threw a document on the table and said you were part of the reason we have this wall between the CIA and the FBI, which has kept these agencies from talking and sharing snippets and maybe if the wall hadn’t been there, maybe 9/11 could have been avoided. That was probably unfair. That wall had been there 10 years before Gorelick got around to sandblasting it, and it was there after it. Ashcroft’s own people have said, 'Yeah, it’s a pretty good wall.’ The day before Bush and Cheney met with the Commission, he put another document on the Web site. And this was sort of just kind of sticking it in her face, and even the Bush administration, the White House said the next day that’s just, they had no business doing that.” Greenhouse helpfully suggested: “Off the point.” Duffy agreed: “Right, off the point. But it’s still on the Web site.”
So, is he advocating the suppression of a set of government documents? What happened to the much-vaunted “people’s right to know”?
There was an interesting documentary on the tube recently about Henry Luce who founded Time Magazine. Back in its heyday, it was a thick magazine. Check it out now. Incredibly thin and circulation only a small fraction of what it once was. By the time Time hits the newsstands it is already dated and in the age of the Internet, folks already know about their stories.
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".
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. . . .
- - Wall Street Journal
It's one of the reasons the World hates us.
Btw, Hayek nailed it so perfectly that most of the DNC's talking points are just topical updates of the socialist policies he was dissecting in 1940.
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