Jamie Gorelick – What a Girl Wants (you MUST read this

Jamie Gorelick wants to be Attorney General – badly. That is why she agreed to be on the 9/11 Commission. Her reward for sufficiently tarring President Bush in the Commission’s report would be a guaranteed position as Attorney General in a Democrat administration. Jamie Gorelick wants to be Attorney General, and she will do anything to get the job.

Make no mistake – this is an opportunity Ms. Gorelick has been savoring since December of 1996, when Bill Clinton decided to keep Janet Reno on as Attorney General in his second term. Soon after that decision, she departed from her number two slot at Justice, biding her time in FNMA and private practice. Clinton needed Reno’s apparent veneer of impartiality to wade through his myriad scandals.

As an interesting side note, Ms. Gorelick also had designs on the top spot in the CIA; Clinton passed upon her candidacy for that position as well, though it had been reported that she was being considered, along with Sandy Berger. Aside from a brief stint as the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, her qualifications for that position – Director of the CIA – remain a mystery. Her judgment on matters of intelligence – e.g. the now-famous information “wall” between the CIA and FBI – has been, at best questionable; at worst, it should properly be the subject of the very investigation she is involved in as a 9/11 Commissioner.

For example, consider the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal – which, it should be noted, was “handled” by Senator John Kerry and his Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Gorelick had represented Clark Clifford and Robert Altman when they tried to get their former employer First American Bank (a BCCI property) to pay their legal fees, though the Justice Department was involved in the prosecution of BCCI. Further, she had close ties to the embattled lawyers in the White House when the Clintons brought her in to replace Philip Heymann, former Deputy Attorney General, during the Whitewater and Vince Foster scandals. Mr. Heymann had been abruptly fired by the Clinton White House when he objected to the manner in which the White House was handling the Foster investigation – and he was almost immediately replaced by close Clinton ally Gorelick.

During the Travelgate investigation, yet another Clinton scandal, Ms. Gorelick’s Associate Deputy Attorney General, David Margolis, apparently attempted to interfere with the prosecution of Billy Dale and Gary Wright by improperly divulging information disclosed at a grand jury proceeding to Democrat John Conyers – at the time, Conyers was Chairman of the House Government Operations Committee. Despite this glaring, egregious breach of the rules of criminal procedure by Margolis – which would benefit the Clinton White House – Gorelick took no action against Margolis and kept him on. Gorelick is an unabashed political operative to the end.

Jamie Gorelick has been described as a iron-fisted and politically dexterous deputy attorney general. It was well-known that she handled the day-to-day operations at Justice, whereas Reno functioned as more of a figurehead who lost her compass when she lost Gorelick in early 1997. However, Gorelick’s added value was her political acumen. For example, when the Republicans began to attack Clinton’s judicial appointments as soft on crime – prior to the 1996 election – Gorelick set up a “war room” similar to the Clinton “war room” of the 1992 election. Her entire purpose was to control the news cycle and bolster the images of the liberal judges and lawyers in Clinton’s roster. In many ways, Gorelick is every bit as slick as her boss was – i.e. Clinton.

Ms. Gorelick’s seemingly inappropriate functions outraged some commentators, such as Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation. Levin pondered “[p]recisely what . . . the lawyers assigned to the Justice ‘war room’ [were] doing, and with whom [were] they at ‘war’?” At the same time, Levin also noted that “Mrs. Gorelick's former law firm -Miller, Cassidy, Larroca and Lewin – [was] representing Craig Livingstone, the man at the center of the [Clinton] Filegate scandal [being investigated by the Justice Department].” Not surprisingly, Gorelick, who was effectively running Justice at the time, did not recuse herself.

Jamie Gorelick wants to finally emerge from the shadow of Janet Reno, not merely as the de facto Attorney General, but as the actual attorney general of the United States. Her outrageous conflict of interest as a Commissioner of the 9/11 panel is just par for the course, and her keen political skills will enable her to deflect criticism and keep her position – despite the strong evidence that she should, in fact, step down as a Commissioner and be sworn-in as a witness. A former Democrat staffer recently stated that Ms. Gorelick is on the commission for one reason – and it isn’t for her legal mind. Gorelick in on the Commission “to make sure Bush and his team look as bad as possible and to protect the Clintons and Reno." Her reward for doing her job well. . . the powerful position she has coveted for seven years.

A couple comments I'd like to add on the mention of Clark Clifford above:

One thing I'd note is that years prior to Kerry's investigation of the BCCI scandal, Clifford had been an attorney for John F. Kennedy ("In the Eisenhower years Clifford was not called by the White House, but he remained active in Democratic politics. He was also the personal lawyer for Kennedy, then a young senator from Massachusetts.": "Clark Clifford, Key Adviser to Four Presidents, Dies"), whose family had of course long been linked to Kerry's political career. There is another potential conflict of interest there in that Kerry protected Clifford during the BCCI investigation--jmstein7 I know you're already aware of this, but for the sake of the present discussion here's some details from one of your earlier posts:

SHADY Kerry Flashback (1992): About that BCCI report, Mr. Kerry (Kerry's shady dealings)

There is good reason to ask Mr. Kerry some tough questions about his own involvement in the BCCI scandal - questions he has not yet answered satisfactorily. Mr. Kerry had started the investigation that led to BCCI long ago, when he decided to scrutinize drug money-laundering in Central America. That investigation was begun, according to congressional staffers involved in the probe, in the hope that some tie to George Bush, via the dealings of the CIA, could be found to implicate the president in the drug trade. Instead, as the inquiry progressed, it was Democratic icon Clark Clifford who was implicated.

Mr. Clifford, adviser to presidents and his party's eminence grise, is accused of having been the front man for BCCI when the bank stealthily and illegally bought First American through proxies. Jack Blum, at the time Mr. Kerry's chief investigator, learned of Mr. Clifford's BCCI connection way back in June 1988. Yet months later, in September 1988, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Blum met with Mr. Clifford, who at the time was serving not only as head of First American but as a lawyer for BCCI as well, to discuss some documents that the senator's subcommittee wanted from BCCI. At that meeting Mr. Clifford told Mr. Blum and Mr. Kerry that acquiring the documents wouldn't be necessary because BCCI was on the up and up.

Even though Mr. Blum and Mr. Kerry knew better, they did not confront Mr. Clifford with what they knew about First American. In fact, they let the matter drop. Why? According to Mr. Blum, because "It just didn't seem very important at the time."

It must not have seemed very important months later, either. In the early months of 1989, Mr. Kerry accepted $5,000 in campaign contributions from Mr. Clifford and his associates. The Clifford-BCCI scandal broke in the press some time later, but it was not Mr. Kerry who exposed Mr. Clifford. Indeed, it was not until after the Clifford scandal had ballooned and a few people started asking embarrassing questions about where Mr. Kerry was that the senator threw himself into the BCCI investigation in earnest.

BTW here's an interesting link on this subject, though I can't vouch for the details--don't know enough about the case--I quote it FWIW in generating leads, though:

Roadblocks Chapter 18

So Kerry's new job put him at the center of power and meant that he would rub shoulders with the movers and shakers who were financing the Democratic Party. One of these men was David Paul, the owner of CenTrust Savings in Miami and a pal of Ghaith Pharaon. On July 20, 1988, Kerry hosted a reception honoring Paul, one of the largest contributors to the DSCC, and later the senator used Paul's private jet to fly to a DSCC leadership meeting. He was one of forty select guests at a $122,000 dinner thrown by Paul in Miami that December. Ghaith Pharaon was guest of honor. Later, Paul would boast that he had derailed Kerry's investigation. It was not true. But the senator's rising political profile grated on Jack Blum in the summer of 1988 because of some of the people it put Kerry next to.

Thanks, WilliamofCarmichael; I was about to cite one of those threads myself :) In the second thread, one thing mentioned there (from my Post #82) I'd like to reiterate here:

FReeper Research: GORELICK WORKED WITH RICHARD CLARKE! (HHS website transcript)

John Deutch was an undesecretary in President Carter's Energy Department and a member of the Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee from 1979-1980. During his time there, Jamie Gorelick acted as his legal counsel. Deutch was named to President George Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the early 1990s. He became President Clinton's Director of Central Intelligence in early 1995. While there, he named President Bush's best friend and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft to a new CIA leadership group. He also named President Bush's Ambassador to China, James Lilley, to the leadership group. Scowcroft was President Ford's Deputy National Security Advisor. President Bush was President Ford's Ambassador to China and Director of Central Intelligence (he replaced William Colby as CIA head). Jamie Gorelick became President Clinton's Deputy Attorney General and legal counsel to the Defense Department from 1993-1997. Allegedly, neither Deutch, Scowcroft, Lilley nor Gorelick informed President Clinton of China's theft of all of America's nuclear weapons designs -- ever.

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