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Something that has bothered me:

Remember back to Ashcroft's appearance before the Commission. Ashcroft was the #1 target of the Left/Dems at that time, so the Dems on the Committee were really gunning for him. Their questioning was very antagonistic toward the AG.

Gorelick was one of the most antagonistic. During her questioning, almost berating, it was as if Ashcroft had had enough. He made mention of the Gorelick memo (classified) and told the Committee he would de-classify the memo if the Committee really wanted to be serious.

Memo? Secret memo? Of course, the MSM went wild. Ashcroft did read parts of the documentation that revealed Gorelick's involvement in 'The Wall'. That broke the dam on 'The Wall'. Of course, since it pointed right into the heart of the Clinton Justice Department, the MSM quickly went silent.

Gorelick went silent.

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What bothered me was the reaction of GWB to Ashcoft's revelation of Gorelick and The Wall. Remember that GWB demands loyalty from his underlings. So, did GWB criticize Gorelick? No. Did GWB criticize x42? No. Did GWB criticize Tenet? No. Who did GWB criticize? Ashcroft. His own AG.

Not many picked up on GWB's treatment of Ashcroft. It was anything but 'team loyalty'. I always felt that one experience was instrumental in Ashcroft bowing out at the end of GWB's first term.

“At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents" and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo. This is simply not true.

First, I did not invent the "wall," which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it. In a nutshell, that law, as the courts read it, said intelligence investigators could conduct electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign targets under a more lenient standard than is required in ordinary criminal cases, but only if the "primary purpose" of the surveillance were foreign intelligence rather than a criminal prosecution.”

-Jamie GORElick, Washington Post 4/2004