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
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague."
Cicero About 2500 years ago
They didn't want to appear "mean."
So they allowed this sham of an investigation to proceed with one of the PERPS on the committee, as if it was a real investigation.
These *!#!#!#!#!* make me sick, all of them.
It's not like national security matters or anything. The main thing is to "get along," to insult the people who want to defend our borders, and mostly, to get steroids out of baseball.
is there anyone left on FNC that would put this at the top of the list?
Brit Hume?
Tony Snow?
Hanity?
Heck I would even go for Gretta pushing the TRAITOR prosecution angle!
Sadly FR alone can not get the word out!
U.S. military intelligence identified two 9/11 hijackers in 1999 and recommended that they be deported, but the Clinton administration failed to act because Deputy Attorney General Gorelick questioned the legality of collecting the intelligence! Then Sandy Berger stole classified documents (his own notes prepared while he was Clinton's national security advisor) in order to conceal the facts. The magnitude of this Clinton administration subterfuge cannot be overstated. With whom did Berger discuss and plan his theft? Who made it easy for him to steal his own notes from classified files? When does the new investigation begin? Watergate is a bad joke compared to this.
Exctly.
I'll bet the reason the 9-11 Commission staff did not inform the committee members is because the Republicans, as usual, allowed the rats to stack the staff with rat operatives.
Sure - and you had a real j***-off as chairman, RINO Tom Kean of NJ
More important news from DRUDGE:
"Tree Limb Falls at PGA, Injuring Spectator...
Teens operate on dead cat -- saving kittens...
Supercuts sued over alleged Spanish language ban..."
Oh geez... what would we do if we didn't know about these vital issues?
LOL :)
I never trusted that douchebag
Where did you get this information about the content of Berger's stolen documents?
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....
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."
Ain't that sweet...
Yep. No question about it.
thx. :)
bookmark
Probably not enough.
But who will ever know? The old media will bury this, and the Bush administration will help cover for clinton.
It's starting to make sense to me now. You can't tell me that this information was not known by nearly everyone in Washington, including the Repubs. The only reason that "we the people" are finally figuring it out is b/c of the internet. In the past, it was easy to keep the "little people" in the dark about what was going on in government. I'm sure both sides are sweating it a bit, but with the help of the media I'm afraid nothing will come of this. If the Repubs don't make a big deal of this when they come back from vacation, then we will know the truth.
And why. pray tell, would they do such a thing? That makes no sense at all. I think they are awaiting revelations to come that will further fry the RATs. The MSM will continue to ignore this at their own risk. The blogosphere is on this big time and they don't go away.
I guess it's up to us and the new media, once again.
BTTT
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