Merricck Garland was Jamie Gorelick's principle Deputy

In 1993, Garland joined the new Clinton administration as deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The following year, then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick—a key mentor of Garland's—asked Garland to be her principal deputy.

Gorelick’s Wall

April 15, 2004
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB108198447949083135

We predicted Democrats would use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes, and that much of the press would oblige. But color us astonished that barely anyone appreciates the significance of the bombshell Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped on the hearings Tuesday. If Jamie Gorelick were a Republican, you can be sure our colleagues in the Fourth Estate would be leading the chorus of complaint that the Commission’s objectivity has been fatally compromised by a member who was also one of the key personalities behind the failed antiterror policy that the Commission has under scrutiny. Where’s the outrage?

At issue is the pre-Patriot Act “wall” that prevented communication between intelligence agents and criminal investigators — a wall, Mr. Ashcroft said, that meant “the old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail.” The Attorney General explained:

“In the days before September 11, the wall specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. After the FBI arrested Moussaoui, agents became suspicious of his interest in commercial aircraft and sought approval for a criminal warrant to search his computer. The warrant was rejected because FBI officials feared breaching the wall.

“When the CIA finally told the FBI that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were in the country in late August, agents in New York searched for the suspects. But because of the wall, FBI headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the hunt for the suspected terrorists.

“At that time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote headquarters, quote, ‘Whatever has happened to this — someday someone will die — and wall or not — the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain ‘problems.’ “

What’s more, Mr. Ashcroft noted, the wall did not mysteriously arise: “Someone built this wall.” That someone was largely the Democrats, who enshrined Vietnam-era paranoia about alleged FBI domestic spying abuses by enacting the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Mr. Ashcroft pointed out that the wall was raised even higher in the mid-1990s, in the midst of what was then one of the most important antiterror investigations in American history — into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On Tuesday the Attorney General declassified and read from a March 4, 1995, memo in which Jamie Gorelick — then Deputy Attorney General and now 9/11 Commissioner — instructed then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and United States Attorney Mary Jo White that for the sake of “appearances” they would be required to adhere to an interpretation of the wall far stricter than the law required.

Ms. White was then the lead prosecutor in cases related to the Trade Center bombing. Ms. Gorelick explicitly references United States v. Yousef and United States v. Rahman — cases that might have greatly expanded our pre-9/11 understanding of al Qaeda had investigators been given a freer hand. The memo is a clear indication that there was pressure then for more intelligence sharing. Ms. Gorelick’s response is an unequivocal “no”:

“We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.” (emphases added)

In case anyone was in doubt, Janet Reno herself affirmed the policy several months later in a July 19, 1995, memo that we have unearthed. In it, the then-Attorney General instructs all U.S. Attorneys about avoiding “the appearance” of overlap between intelligence-related activities and law-enforcement operations.

Recall, too, that during the time of Ms. Gorelick’s 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh’s FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from foreign sources, involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie. Mr. Trie later told investigators that between 1994 and 1996 he raised some $1.2 million, much of it from foreign sources, whose identities were hidden by straw donors. Ms. Gorelick resigned as deputy attorney general in 1997 to become vice chairman of Fannie Mae.

From any reasonably objective point of view, the Gorelick memo has to count as by far the biggest news so far out of the 9/11 hearings. The Mary Jo White prosecutions and the 2001 Moussaoui arrest were among our best chances to uncover and unravel the al Qaeda network before it struck the homeland. But thanks in part to the Clinton Administration’s concern with appearances and in part to its legacy, these investigations were hamstrung.

Ms. Gorelick — an aspirant to Attorney General under a President Kerry — now sits in judgment of the current Administration. This is what, if the principle has any meaning at all, people call a conflict of interest. Henry Kissinger was hounded off the Commission for far less. It’s such a big conflict of interest that the White House could hardly be blamed if it decided to cease cooperation with the 9/11 Commission pending Ms. Gorelick’s resignation and her testimony under oath as a witness into the mind of the Reno Justice Department. What exactly was the purpose of the wall?

Jamie Gorelick’s wall

The Washington Times - Thursday, April 15, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/apr/15/20040415-094758-5267r/

The disclosure that Jamie Gorelick, a member of the September 11 commission, was personally responsible for instituting a key obstacle to cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence operations before the terrorist attacks raises disturbing questions about the integrity of the commission itself. Ms. Gorelick should not be cross-examining witnesses; instead, she should be required to testify about her own behavior under oath. Specifically, commission members need to ask her about a 1995 directive she wrote that made it more difficult for the FBI to locate two of the September 11 hijackers who had already entered the country by the summer of 2001.

On Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft declassified a four-page directive sent by Ms. Gorelick (the No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department) on March 4, 1995, to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Mary Jo White, the New York-based U.S. attorney investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In the memo, Ms. Gorelick ordered Mr. Freeh and Ms. White to follow information-sharing procedures that “go beyond what is legally required,” in order to avoid “any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” that the Justice Department was using Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, instead of ordinary criminal investigative procedures, in an effort to undermine the civil liberties of terrorism suspects.

At issue was the oft-noted wall of separation that prevented counterterrorism agents and federal prosecutors from communicating with one another prior to September 11. Information collected under special FISA warrants, which do not require a probable cause, was generally not to be shared with personnel responsible for enforcing federal criminal laws — where probable cause must be demonstrated for a warrant to be issued.

As lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey noted on our Op-Ed page yesterday, the practical effect of the wall was that counterintelligence information was generally kept away from law enforcement personnel who were investigating al Qaeda activities.

But Ms. Gorelick’s memo clearly indicated that the Clinton administration had decided as a matter of policy to go even beyond the law’s already stringent requirements in order to further choke off information sharing.

As Mr. Ashcroft noted during his testimony before the September 11 commission, all of this had a devastating effect into the investigation of al Qaeda operations in this country in the summer of 2001. For example, in late August, when the CIA told the FBI that Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had entered the country, FBI investigators refused to permit criminal investigators with considerable knowledge about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the manhunt.

Also, a criminal search warrant to examine the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, whose interest in flying aircraft had attracted attention, was rejected because FBI officials were afraid of breaching the wall.

Ms. Gorelick has been among the most partisan and aggressive Democratic panel members in questioning the anti-terror efforts of the Bush administration.

The nation deserves a full accounting from Ms. Gorelick of why the Clinton administration felt it necessary to go the extra mile in order to hamper the capability of law enforcement and intelligence agents to talk to one another.

If Ms. Gorelick fails to provide this, her actions would bring into serious doubt the credibility of the commission.

Jamie Gorelick Who ‘Helped to Bring us 9/11 AND Housing Collapse’ Is On Short List to Lead FBI

by JEFF DUNETZ 24 Mar 2011
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2011/03/24/jamie-gorelick-who-helped-to-bring-us-9-11-and-housing-collapse-is-on-short-list-to-lead-fbi/

Barack Obama really knows how to pick them. It’s not often that one person plays key roles in two — count ’em, two — trillion-dollar disasters but Jamie Gorelick is one. She helped to bring us 9/11 and the collapse of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Ms. Gorelick is on the presidental short list to be the head of the FBI.

As Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997 Jamie Gorelick wrote the memo that created the now infamous “Gorelick Wall.” A 1995 memo she wrote, stated explicitly that they would “go beyond what is legally required, [to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.” These rules were, shortly after their creation, expanded to regulate such communications in future counter-terrorism investigations. It set a procedure where various intelligence operations could not share information with each other.

Jamie Gorelick’s wall barred anti-terror investigators from accessing the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, already in custody on an immigration violation shortly before 9/11.

At the time, an enraged FBI investigator wrote a prophetic memo to headquarters about the wall

‘Whatever has happened to this — someday someone will die — and wall or not — the public will not understand why we were not more effective in throwing every resource we had at certain problems…..especially since the biggest threat to us UBL [Usama bin Laden], is getting the most protection.
Here’s another “fun” Jamie Gorelick story. She was a member of the 9/11 commission but did not share her “wall memo” with anyone until, Attorney General John Ashcroft was blasted for the “wall” while he was testifying before the 9/11 commission and said:

“Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review,” he said. “Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission.”
OOPS! Hey She forgot to share that memo. I am sure she is sorry.

Gorelick’s “wall” blocked America’s view just when it needed its vision to stop the worst terrorist attack ever on our shores. But that was her encore. Before that she worked on destroying the economy.

Gorelick was appointed the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period, she earned over $26 million. During her tenure, Fannie suffered a $10 billion accounting scandal, because of falsified transaction. These bogus tranactions helped FNMA hit earnings targets for 1998, which triggered bonuses for top executives including nearly $800,000 to Gorelick

During Gorelick’s tenure Fannie Mae began to bundle subprime loans into securitized financial instruments.

In 2001, Gorelick made the annoucement that Fannie was buying subprime loans encouraged by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and bundling them as securitized financial instruments. Securities made from bundles of guaranteed mortgages were to contribute to the economic collapse in 2008. (H/T CNSNews)

“Fannie Mae will buy CRA loans from lenders’ portfolios; we’ll package them into securities; we’ll purchase CRA mortgages at the point of origination; and we’ll create customized CRA-targeted securities,” she said in 2001. “This expanded approach has improved liquidity in the secondary market for CRA product, and has helped our lenders leverage even more CRA lending. Lenders now have the flexibility to use their own, customized loan products.”
In remarks before the American Bankers Association on Oct. 30, 2000, Gorelick explicitly how the procress would work and what Fannie Mae would do to make it feasible for banks to lend to low-income applicants.

“We will take CRA loans off your hands–we will buy them from your portfolios, or package them into securities–so you have fresh cash to make more CRA loans,” she said. “Some people have assumed we don’t buy tough loans. Let me correct that misimpression right now. We want your CRA loans because they help us meet our housing goals.”

And there’s more. Remember those “Friends of Angelo” VIP loans given by the now bankrupt Countrywide Savings that got Chris Dodd in trouble because they were a major conflict of interest? Jamie Gorelick received one of those “conflict of interest loans” while she was Vice-Chair of Fannie Mae. According to a letter by Congressman Issa:

Gorelick not only helped to close America’s eyes to the coming of the 9/11 attacks, and hid her involvement from the 9/11 commission she served Prior to that, Gorelick served Fannie Mae as Vice-transactions when it fudged so top executives (Gorelick included) could get a hefty bonus and it started offering the product that almost brought down the economy. But at least she got some nice “Frends of Angelo” loans from Countrywide Savings out of it.

This is the person that Obama wants to run the FBI ?

Former Clinton Official Paid $26 Million by Fannie Mae Before Taxpayer Bailout Now on Obama Shortlist to Run FBI

By Chris Neefus | March 23, 2011
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/former-clinton-official-paid-26-million-fannie-mae-taxpayer-bailout-now-obama-shortlist

(CNSNews.com) – Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton administration official who reportedly has made the Obama administration’s short list to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was paid more than $26 million in total compensation as a top executive at Fannie Mae—before taxpayers had to bail out the mortgage giant.

Gorelick, who left the Clinton Justice Department in 1997 to work for Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, was paid $26,466,834 in salary, bonuses, performance pay and stock options from 1998 to 2003, according to the Report of the Special Examination of Fannie Mae (2006), conducted by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

Gorelick served as vice chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) when the government-sponsored enterprise was bundling subprime loans into securitized financial instruments. Prior to that, she served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department under then-Attorney General Janet Reno from 1994 to 1997.

Raines had served as Clinton’s budget director before assuming the top post at Fannie Mae.

In 2001, Gorelick announced that Fannie was buying subprime loans encouraged by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and bundling them as securitized financial instruments. Securities made from bundles of guaranteed mortgages were to contribute to the banking crisis later in the decade.

In remarks before the American Bankers Association on Oct. 30, 2000, Gorelick explicitly how the procress would work and what Fannie Mae would do to make it feasible for banks to lend to low-income applicants.

“We will take CRA loans off your hands—we will buy them from your portfolios, or package them into securities—so you have fresh cash to make more CRA loans,” she said. “Some people have assumed we don’t buy tough loans. Let me correct that misimpression right now. We want your CRA loans because they help us meet our housing goals.”

By 2008, securities containing subprime loans were causing problems for financial institutions that had them on their balance sheets. Ultimately the federal government bailed out banks with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Fannie and Freddie were taken under direct conservatorship by the federal government when Congress passed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. In exchange for injecting $100 billion of liquidity into each government-sponsored enterprise, the government took an ownership stake of 79 percent in each, leaving the taxpayer with an unknown liability dependent upon future performance.

Gorelick left Fannie Mae in 2003.

Gorelick was named in a story in the Wall Street Journal as someone being considered for nomination as the next FBI director.

In a 1995 Justice Department memo, written when she was deputy attorney general, Kagan prescribed a policy for limiting the flow of information between intelligence gatherers and criminal investigators within the Justice Department.

In the memo, “Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations,” Gorelick set out guidelines for concurrent investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by both criminal investigators and intelligence officers within the Department of Justice.

Rules stemming from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), under which the intelligence community was operating as part of its investigation, stipulates that information may only be gathered by way of surveillance for the primary purpose of intelligence, not to contribute to a criminal case under which defendants have more constitutional protections.

FBI Director Robert Mueller waits to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010, before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing to examine nine years after 9/11, focusing on confronting the terrorist threat to the homeland. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Gorelick sought to make clear in her memo that investigators of both stripes were adhering to FISA precedent and not misappropriating the authority to undermine the rights of any defendant.

“These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation,” Gorelick wrote.

Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft later testified before the 9/11 Commission that Gorelick’s “wall” was a “structural cause” in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 being allowed to occur.

In his prepared testimony, he said, “In 1995 the Justice Department, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required. … The single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents. Government erected this wall. Government buttressed this wall. And before September 11, government was blinded by this wall.”

After Ashcroft’s commission testimony, Gorelick published a commentary in The Washington Post saying that his accusations were false, and that the “wall” predated her tenure by decades.

“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,” she wrote.

Gorelick made no mention in the commentary of her statement in the 1995 memo that she was going “beyond what [was] legally required” in her prescriptions for handling the cases related to the 1993 bombings.

However, in the months leading up to 9/11, Ashscroft’s Justice Department also did not dismantle the rules or challenge the more general culture in the department that information should be partitioned.

Gorelick’s name appears on the shortlist along with counterintelligence experts such as former Bush Deputy Attorney General James Comey; former Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein; U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald; and D.C. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland, whom President Obama also reportedly considered for a Supreme Court appointment. She has lobbied on behalf of beleaguered British Petroleum (BP) in congressional inquiries and White House meetings.

Current FBI Director Robert Mueller’s 10-year term expires in September of this year.

Mistress of Disaster: Jamie Gorelick

By C. Edmund Wright September 19, 2008
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/09/mistress_of_disaster_jamie_gor.html

Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff must be green with envy over the all the mischief that has been accomplished by Jamie Gorelick, with scarcely any demonization in the press.

Imagine playing a central role in the biggest national defense disaster in 50 years. Imagine playing a central role in one of the biggest economic disasters in your country’s history. Imagine doing both as an un-elected official. Imagine getting filthy rich in the process, and even being allowed to sit self-righteously on a commission appointed to get to the bottom of the first disaster, which of course did not get to the bottom of that disaster or anything else for that matter.

Imagine ending, ruining or at least causing signficant quality deterioration in the lives of millions of people, most of whom will never know your name. Imagine counting your millions of dollars while people who tried to stop you from causing all this mayhem were getting blamed for most of the ills you actually contributed to.

Well, as un-imagineable as this is, there is one American who doesn’t have to imagine it. One Jamie Gorelick is this American. And without pretending that she caused the loss of countless thousands of lives and countless billions of dollars of wealth by herself, she certainly did push some of the early domino’s in catastrophic chain events that are a major factors in life in America today.

This is not a bad millineums’s work, when you think about it. Gorelick, an appointee of Bill Clinton, is the one who constructed the wall of separation that kept the CIA and the FBI from comparing notes and therefore invading the privacy of nice young men like, say, Muhammed Atta and Zacarius Moussaoui. While countless problems were uncovered in our intelligence operations in the wake of 9-11, no single factor comes close to in importance to Jamie Gorelick’s wall.

In fact, it was Gorelick’s wall, perhaps more than any other single factor, that induces some people to blame Clinton himself for 9-11 since he appointed her and she acted consistent with his philosophy of “crime fighting.” She put the wall into place as Deputy Attorney General in 1995.

And for good measure, she was appointed by Tom Daschle to serve on the “non partisan” 9-11 Commission. And we thought the fox in the henhouse was simply a metaphor. Of course, in a splendid example of “reaching across the aisle,” feckless Republican Slade Gorton of Washington did all he could to exonerate Gorelick in the commission. Thanks, Slade. God forbid the nation actually knows the truth.

But for Ms. Gorelick, one earth shaking catastrophe is just not enough. You might think that she caused enough carnage to us infidels on 9-11 as to qualify her for the 72 virgins upon her death. (this would also keep her consistent with several of Clinton’s philosophies).

Alas, that’s only part of her resume. Her fingerprints are all over the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac mess, which is to say the mess that is central in the entire mortgage-housing crisis. Without so much as one scintilla of real estate or finance experience, she was appointed as Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae in 1997 and served in that role through 2003, which is when most of the systemic cancers that came home to roost today happened. She was instrumental in covering up problems with Fannie Mae while employed there and took multiple millions in bonuses as she helped construct this house of cards.

From Wikipedia:

One example of falsified financial transactions that helped the company meet earnings targets for 1998, a “manipulation” that triggered multimillion-dollar bonuses for top executives. On March 25, 2002, Business Week Gorelick is quoted as saying, “We believe we are managed safely. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions.” One year later, Government Regulators “accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses”

As we know, the financial damage done by the housing related problems in this country are still incalculable. Ms. Gorelick’s evil tab is still growing.

But it doesn’t stop there. She managed to be on the wrong side of the Duke LaCrosse case, working for Duke University to protect that school from it’s damaging knee jerk reactions to the spectacularly unbelievable charges filed by a stripper. (excuse me, exotic dancer). So, even on a smaller scale, she continues to make money while working to ruin the lives of innocent Americans in defense of liberal dogma. At the Department of Defense, when she served as legal counsel there in 1993, she drafted the “Don’t ask /don’t tell” policy.

From what can be gleaned, it all comes from being well connected. She was educated (is that what they call it?) at Harvard undergrad and Harvard Law. From there, she kept getting appointed to positions above her experience level where she could flex her liberal muscles, add a resume item, and move upward.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/mistress_of_disaster_jamie_gor.html#ixzz435ibVDC1

IS JAMIE GORELICK IN ON IRS SCANDAL, TOO?

Jack Cashill notes ‘Mistress of Disaster’ is vice chairwoman of Urban Institute

02/12/2014
http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/is-jamie-gorelick-in-on-irs-scandal-too/#32U95eD2mie6CwXi.99

Just when I think I am beyond the reach of shock, I come across some new revelation that makes my head rotate.

Disturbing enough was the discovery that the Soros-funded Urban Institute has an officially sanctioned role in the vetting of nonprofits that seek tax-exempt status through the IRS.

Almost equally disturbing is the revelation that the vice chairwoman of the Urban Institute Board of Trustees is none other than Jamie Gorelick. How does this lady manage it?

In her most recent public outing, Gorelick represented BP in the Gulf oil mess – not the first disaster with which the 58-year-old Gorelick has been involved.

Indeed, bloggers have taken to calling Jamie Gorelick “The Mistress of Disaster” and with good reason. Now, she can add an IRS scandal notch to her multi-notched belt.

In 1993, as deputy attorney general under President Clinton, Gorelick served as “field commander” for the horrific government assault on a religious community in Waco, Texas, that left more than 80 dead, 20 of them children.

In 1995, she went on to pen the infamous “wall” memo that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information in the run-up to September 11.

At the time, a dismayed FBI investigator wrote a memo to headquarters that included the sentence, “Whatever has happened to this – someday someone will die – and wall or not – the public will not understand why we were not more effective. …”

In 1996 Gorelick stepped up her game, taking a lead role in the investigation of the TWA Flight 800 disaster. This was the 747 that inexplicably blew up off the coast of Long Island in July 1996 killing 230 people.

As deputy attorney general serving under a feckless Janet Reno, Gorelick’s assignment was to rein in the FBI. This had become increasingly necessary.

Although putting a “bomb” spin on his leaks to the New York Times, Jim Kallstrom, who headed up the FBI investigation, had spent the first five weeks after the crash pursuing the truth.

At that juncture, five weeks into the investigation, even if Gorelick knew no more than what she read in the Times, she would have known that explosive residue had been found all over the plane and that the possibility of a mechanical failure was more “remote” than ever.

Gorelick surely knew much more, specifically that the FBI had already interviewed more than 700 eyewitnesses. At least 244 of these people provided highly specific accounts of a missile strike on the aircraft.

On Aug. 22, 1996, Gorelick summoned Kallstrom to Washington and served up a dose of political reality. To be sure, no account of the Aug. 22 meeting provides any more than routine detail, but behaviors began to change immediately afterward.

The FBI had already leaked to the New York Times information that would result in a headline on Aug. 23, top right: “Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of Flight 800.”

This article stole the thunder from Clinton’s election-driven approval of welfare reform in that same day’s paper and threatened to undermine the peace and prosperity message of the next week’s Democratic National Convention.

What followed in the next several weeks was the most ambitious and successful cover-up in American peacetime history.

At its center was Gorelick. With the help of a complicit media, she and her cronies transformed a transparent missile strike into a mechanical failure of unknown origin.

Given her role, the months after the crash had to have been emotionally harrowing. In May 1997, the Clintons appear to have rewarded Gorelick for her steely performance with a job that would pay her $877,573 in that first half-year alone.

According to a Lexis search, not one reporter even questioned why a middling bureaucrat with no financial or housing experience would be handed a sinecure that the Washington Monthly called “the equivalent of winning the lottery,” the vice chairmanship of Fannie Mae.

One does not have to be a cynic to suspect that a grateful Clinton had something to do with it.

Six years and an incredible $25.6 million later, having done her share to wreck the American economy, Gorelick responded to the call of duty once more and took just one of five Democratic seats on the 9/11 Commission.

In testifying before that commission, anti-terror czar Richard Clarke asked that intelligence analysts “be forgiven for not thinking about [aviation terror] given the fact that they hadn’t seen a lot in the five or six years intervening about it.”

Almost assuredly, Clarke had downplayed talk of aviation terror during those years to take Flight 800 off the table. Almost assuredly, Gorelick took the 9/11 post to keep it off.

Now, Gorelick finds herself once again as the vice chairwoman of an organization at the center of a major controversy. Time will tell what role the Urban Institute has played, but Gorelick’s presence offers no assurance that it was a benign one.

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