"Do Al Gore and other Democrats really want to keep the government from finding al Qaeda agents in the U.S.?"
That's silly. Of course they want to find them. They just don't want to kill them.
Ya see their plan is that when they do catch them they'll....
After a couple years of this 24/7/365 gubmint oversight al Qaeda will be so demoralized and just plain lazy, they won't have the will nor energy to kill anyone. However, they WILL get accustomed to sitting in various gubmint offices for hours on end - only to be told at 4:45 pm to 'come back tomorrow'.
It's really quite dastardly when you think about it.
If the Clinton administration wasn't too busy pimping for Exxon and their interests in the Caspian Sea area, maybe they would have been more interested in the info that Sudan was serving up on a silver platter. In 1995, Roger Tamraz sold Gore on his idea for a pipeline. If the White House and the NSC had spent less time worrying whether or not Exxon got its 5%, maybe 9/11 never would have happened.