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Posted on 08/17/2005 7:45:15 AM PDT by bobsunshine
The uproar over 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick's very simple and very blatant conflict of interest appears, predictably, to be quelling. The New York Times, quoting an anonymous commission member, reliably concluded not that her 1995 memorandum was a smoking gun of intelligence lapse, but rather that John Ashcroft had "politicized" the proceedings by bringing it up. This after commission Republicans curiously leapt to Gorelick's defense, first warning us to stay out of their business (Chairman Kean), and then slandering as "baloney" (John Lehman) and "garbage" (Slade Gorton) good-faith criticism of a delegitimizing process in which a key witness is also a commissioner actively steering the direction of the panel's public hearings and final report.
Meanwhile, Gorelick's allies from the old Clinton war room mobilized as they always so skillfully do. With the help of compliant media friends, they've managed to dissect the obvious into a maze of miniature, obscure, and disingenuous legalisms that take so much airtime to untangle any hope for clarity is lost. The talking points are out: "So, you must also be saying that Justice Scalia should recuse himself from the case involving Vice President Cheney?" "Wasn't this 'wall' really in effect since the 1970s?" "Didn't the 1995 Gorelick memo simply codify existing law?" "Don't many of the commissioners have some involvement in facts the commission is examining?"
The people who ask these questions know full well that they are misleading. Gorelick's conflict has nothing remotely to do with having a social relationship with litigant in a matter in which she is otherwise uninvolved. What was in effect since the 1970s was FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), not the wall Gorelick and others placed between criminal and intelligence investigators in 1995.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Really great article!
Very, very good.
So why did the GOP help them by appointing milquetoast pubbies who could be used as sock puppets and by staying silent when the most blatant partisan tactics were used by Democrat Commission members to steer the investigation away from the facts?
Isnt it clear? The Administration never wanted the commission, (and BTW Fred Fielding is hardly a milquetoast sock puppet) so it was far easier to put a couple of toothless pubbies to go along with Partisan Dems, to basically make the commission all bark, and no bite.
Perhaps what we are really seeing is not a situation involving Republicans vs. Democrats but rather Government vs. Citizens.
Considering the Islamic hatred for our country and way of life and their willingness to die to kill as many of us as possible, we are lucky that 9/11 was all that it was. That's not to minimize what did happen, but rather to say it could have been much worse.
It was dumb luck we SURVIVED the Clinton crime family's occupation of the WH. Thank God GWB has had two terms to hopefully set things right.
August 17, 2005
Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.
The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau.
Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.
But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned.
"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.
He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.
"It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.
The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the program to acknowledge his role publicly.
At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.
The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who is also working part time for the Pentagon, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public. In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant."
The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about it, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.
Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.
Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department, first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.
Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He said that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from major.
Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.
The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.
A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."
"And if these assertions are credible," Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger."
Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying that they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.
"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."
"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."
Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases, nor was he aware of which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from Internet sites and from paid search engines like LexisNexis.
If I were her, I'd be worried for my life. Far too many around the Clintons suddenly find themselves dead by very mysterious circumstances when they appear to become a liability.
the gop does what it does beat in yhese situations. nothing. new tone you know. weldon is the exception.
Click the picture...
Bump!
But to follow your logic, Gorelick MUST realize by now what she accomplished, and in not speaking out SHE IS COVERED IN GUILT. She knows the 3,000 died from her actions, inadvertant or not. She can only ATONE for those deaths by being forthright. Maybe she will get the chance to show she has humanity, but the opportunity won't be for long....
"It was dumb luck we SURVIVED the Clinton crime family's occupation of the WH. Thank God GWB has had two terms to hopefully set things right."
YES, but the time is here for President Bush to Take Names and Kick Butt......... in the name of the American People!
Could be some strategery....let the dims have a long rope....get near the '08 preliminaries....bury the rats (and schrillery) for good.
You are correct but she is also a political hack whom was appointed by the Clintons because she was and is a political hack. It will not happen and as such is covered in American blood by the act of silence.
It's not good for national security to show how vulnerable the US becomes when the Democrats are in charge, because they will be again some day.
Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, who wants the world to know we are complete pushover when their like comes around again.
I think this was the logic used to set-up the 9/11 Whitewash Commission. Fix the problems, but keep future national security in mind at the same time.
Im from NJ Kean is a Dem (aka RINO) and he beat McGreavey to the punch he was the 1st NJ gayvoner!
Fugetdaboutit. Never happen.
The Clintons will skate, as usual.
The MSM will see to it at any cost.
The goal is to hold the line for two more years then pick up where the first Clinton left off in the dismantling of this once great nation.
"It's not good for national security to show how vulnerable the US becomes when the Democrats are in charge, because they will be again some day."
There were three critical junctures in the Middle East that have lead to the present state of a terror offensive against the United States.
1. Jimmy Carter did not exact massive retaliation for the holding of hostages by the revolutionary guard in Theran. The guard was actually an extension of the Theran Government that gave them plusiable deniability.
2. Ronald Regan did not exact massive retaliation for the bombing of the American Embassy in Beriut.
3. Bill Clinton did not exact massive retribution for the attack in Mogidishu, the attack on the USS Cole, and the Attack on embassys in Dar-Eslam and in Sudan.
These three convinenced the radical moslems they could attack us in our home country. This is a war and it will be a long one. Some of the action will be in the open as it is in Iraq. Much of it will never be known as the bad guys die in the night at the hands of our delta forces and other special ops.
Go spread the gloom and doom at DU.....
We don't need it here.
OK, I'll get your approval first on how to play pretend nice...just so you feel good.
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