"I may not have been the greatest president,
but I've had the most fun eight years."
- Bill Clinton, November 2000
Posted on 08/12/2005 6:21:30 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
In March of 1995, Louis Freeh, then FBI Director, and Mary Jo White, the New York U.S. attorney investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, received a directive written by Jamie Gorelick, President Clinton’s number two official in the Justice Department. That directive—which has come to be known as the “wall of separation” memo—ordered Freeh and White to “go beyond what is legally required” in following information-sharing procedures between intelligence agencies and agencies charged with criminal investigations of suspected terrorists. At issue, seemingly, was a White House concern to avoid “any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” that the civil liberties of terrorism suspects were being undermined.
As has come to light in the past few days, the Gorelick Memo seems to be at the heart of the non-passing of information discovered by a counter-terrorism military operation known as “Able Danger” to the FBI that Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hi-jackers had set up an al-Queda cell in Brooklyn, New York, as early as a year prior to the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, the information that White House or Department of Defense attorneys denied “Able Danger’s” request to give that information to the FBI was furnished to staff members of the Sept. 11 Commission—of which Jamie Gorelick was a sitting member—as early as October of 2003. But that information was not given to Commission members then and does not appear in the Commission’s final report.
As has been reported in the New York Post today, by Deborah Orin, and quoted in a story on NewsMax.com (go here), Mary Jo White wrote to the Justice Department about the Gorelick directive, complaining, “It is hard to be totally comfortable with the instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States’ Attorneys Office when such prohibitions are not legally required.” According to Orin in the Post account, White was so frustrated that she sent a second memo excoriating the Gorelick “wall of separation” as “hinder[ing] law enforcement,” saying that its prohibitions “could cost lives.”
The questions now are why did Commission staffers not inform the Sept. 11 Commission members of “Able Danger’s” October 2003 report of prior knowledge of an al-Queda cell in Brooklyn, New York a year before the 9/11 attacks? Why is Mary Jo White’s testimony in the Sept. 11 Commission investigation not included in the Commission’s final report? And, finally, why was the Gorelick directive ever written in the first place?
An article from FrontPageMag.com from May of 2004 may shed some light on the reasons for the Gorelick directive (go here). The story suggests strongly that the Clinton Administration worked strenuously, in 1995, to re-organize the ways in which intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI were allowed to communicate with each other and with U.S. Attorneys Offices investigating foreign and domestic espionage cases and that the Gorelick Memo itself is an outgrowth of policies erected under Clinton’s “Presidential Decision Directive 24”:
“In April [2004], CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, . . . created ‘a roadblock’ to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw.”
That maze includes FBI and CIA investigations into the leaking and/or theft of sensitive missile and nuclear information to the Chinese even as illegal donations to the Democratic National Committee were being traced to Bill Clinton’s old Arkansas friend, Johnny Chung. The bureaucratic nightmare created by PDD 24 effectively stalled these investigations until safely after the 1996 Presidential Election, and led to, among others, Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory espionage case. As Mary Jo White wrote in her letter of protest regarding the Gorelick directive, PDD 24’s “instructions leave entirely to OIPR [Office of Intelligence and Policy Review] and the (Justice Department) Criminal Division when, if ever, to contact affected U.S. attorneys on investigations including terrorism and espionage.” And whom did Clinton appoint to head up the OIPR? An old friend of Janet Reno’s from Florida, Richard Scruggs. So, as FrontPageMag pointed out, “for the first time in the history of the Justice Department,” a political appointee was “put in charge of the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review (OIPR). OIPR is the Justice Department agency in charge of requesting wiretap and surveillance authority for criminal and intelligence investigations on behalf of investigative agencies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.”
It must be noted that the Gorelick directive to Freeh and White explicitly mentions the FISA court and prohibits the sharing of information gathered by its investigative agencies with US Attorneys Offices.
The upshot of PDD 24 was that all investigations into espionage activity—including efforts by the CIA, FBI, and the United States Military counter-intelligence operations (like “Able Danger”)—were to be overseen and approved (or not approved) by political appointees that answered directly to a White House that had every reason prior to the 1996 Presidential Election for keeping those agencies from sharing information with each other or with US Attorneys Offices.
It looks like the non-sharing of the “Able Danger” information by staff members of the Sept. 11 Commission with Commission members themselves is much worse than simply an effort to shield Jamie Gorelick for some responsibility for the intelligence failures that, it is now clear, helped to make the 9/11 attacks possible. What is becoming increasingly obvious is that the Gorelick Memo itself was perhaps part of a much larger effort by the Clinton Administration to shield itself from investigations that would imply its complicity in the passing of sensitive military and nuclear intelligence to the Chinese in return for millions in illegal campaign donations in the run-up to the 1996 election.
Representative Weldon—can you spell “MemoGate”?
For a related story, go here:
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=16180&catcode=13
I believe it was.
So would I.
Yep, If it don't bash Bush, it don't run.
"I may not have been the greatest president,
but I've had the most fun eight years."
- Bill Clinton, November 2000
Gets my vote too! Wasn't that the one with the muslum pilot?
I almost have a sense that the nation may actually finally look closer and draw another conclusion over the Murrah Building and the downing of the 747 over Long Island.
You all know of the omissions and deflections of the Clinton Administration.
Gorelick was just one tool of Bill and Hitlery's effort to ignore terrorism while they looted the country.
Imagine the public outrage if this hits the radar of Mr. and Mrs. America.
This is they type of scandal that would finish off the democrat party into oblivion.
How would Gorlick explain that the Clintons probably KNEW and they probably ordered her. Actually probably Mzzzzz. Clinton did the ordering.
You have waited a LONG time for this one my dear!
And to top it off? We have the seizure of police power by the Executive and a conspiracy among executive officers to hide information involving terrorists operating within the country itself.
If that doesn't fit the definition of "high crimes," I'm not sure what does. It's simply treason.
has FR ever freeped Drudge?
Seems like a good time to start!
Nothing will ever become of this...the Republicans don't have the balls!!
Na, I think Gorelick would be offered up as sacrifice for the Clintons.
Bush has said, himself, that the ONE duty that the Constitution charges the President with is the protection of the American people.....................he CANNOT let this slide, and we can't let it slide, either. It's a MAJOR dereliction of duty, IMHO and one that clinton should be hung for, above ALL the others!!
Drudge looks more like "Inside Edition" or "Entertainment Tonight"
If this government can't deal with f#ckers like Sandy Berger and Jamie Gorelick for their rank incompetence and/or outright treason, then it has no business sending U.S. troops to fight a stupid "war on terror" halfway around the world.
In Washington, more than left and right, democrat and republican, there is the ruling and the ruled. Guess which group we're in.
Actually I believe it was as well. The more I read the more I'm convinced that Gorelick and Berger should be put on trial. Or, the very least, summoned before Congress to give an account.
Yes, the poor guy was depressed...........(believe that and I have a bridge to sell you....in NY)
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