We shouldn't overstate Ms. Gorelick's culpability in the Sept. 11 attacks. I think that her raising of the bar on communications between intelligence and law enforcement officials was probably a minor contributor; I suspect that her apparent involvement in the incorrect decision that it was illegal to use special ops troops to go after al Qaeda's leadership, when she was the head attorney for the Department of Defense, was far more significant.
It would appear to be all of the above.
Bookmark.
Exactly what did Berger stuff down his pants that was so important to protect Mr Clinton? I think we know now?????
Can anyone verify that it was Jamie Gorelick who authored the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that was Clinton's first major act as President?
bttt
Have you seen this one?
Excuse me for being late on this thread and saying so but wasn't this exactly what John Ascroft testified to the commission? The Chinese wall prevented communication on the terrorists and one Jamie Gorelick (pronounced GORE-LICK or, alternatively: Clinton knee-pads) was the left wing culprit trying to protect Clintoon's China activity and fund raising.
come and read this guys and gals.
MSM is helpless against this TIDAL WAVE!
John Lehman - where are you? Wake up. There is work to be done here.
e would have it backwards and miss the point entirely if we were to attribute The Gorelick Wall and the attendant metastasis of al Qaeda during the clintons' watch, (which, incidentally, was then in its incipient stage and stoppable), to the '60s liberal mindset. Rampant '60s liberalism was not the underlying rationale for The Gorelick Wall. Rather, The Gorelick Wall was the underlying rationale for--The Gorelick Wall was (insofar as '60s liberalism was the Wall's apparent impetus) a cynical cover for --the willful, methodical malpractice and malfeasance that was the product of the virulent clinton strain of rampant '60s liberalism. While it is true that The Gorelick Wall was the convenient device of a cowardly self-serving president, The Wall's aiding and abetting of al Qaeda was largely incidental, (the pervasiveness of the clintons' Nobel-Peace-Prize calculus notwithstanding). The Wall was engineered primarily to protect a corrupt self-serving president. The metastasis of al Qaeda and 9/11 were simply the cost of doing business, clinton-style. Further confirmation of the Wall-as-cover-for-clinton-corruption thesis:
Conversely, that it never occurred to anyone on the commission that Gorelick's flagrant conflict of interest renders her presence on the commission beyond farce calls into question the commission's judgment if not its integrity. Washington's mutual protection racket writ large, I suspect. The Gorelick Wall is consistent with, and an international extension of, two essential acts committed in tandem, Filegate, the simultaneous empowering of the clintons and disemboweling of clinton adversaries, and the clinton Putsch, the firing and replacement of every U.S. attorney extant.
Allegations of international clinton crimes swirling around the White House in 1995 and beyond support The-Wall-as-cover-for-international-clinton-crimes thesis. Once the clintons' own U.S. attorneys were in place, once the opposition was disemboweled by the knowledge that their raw FBI files had been in the possession of the clintons, once domestic law enforcement was effectively blinded to foreign data by Gorelick's Wall, the clintons were free to methodically and seditiously and with impunity auction off America's security, sovereignty and economy to the highest foreign bidder.
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Fox News Channel is the only one on top of this story like they have been on the corrupt United Nations Oil for Food Scandal. The Big 3 Networks have not said a word about this 911 story. I can assure you if this had happened in 2001 under the Bush administration instead of 2000 under the Clinton bunch, it would have led the news every night for the past 4-5 days and they would be demanding independent investigations or better yet, just impeach the b***tard.
It really has bee astounding for them to seem to be just ignoring this story. Oh well, they seem to have a more scandalous story going on right now; Cindy Sheehan protesting the war outside the ranch in Crawford, Tx. I believe NBC had TWO stories about her on this evenings newscast.
Instead of these news creeps talking about the Prez's poll numbers every 10 minutes, they might take a gander at their own which is about 20 points below his.
bump
. . .what I do NOT understand; is WHY the Repubs allowed this to 'go down'. . .rather than call this travesty for what it was. . .I mean this is not just 'farce' . . .it was closer to treason. Like the many other traitorous activities of Clinton Inc. and 'et al'. . .that have been 'forgiven' it seems.
Instead, we heard in the background - Hillary's favorite challenge. . .WHAT did HE KNOW and WHEN did (GW) know it?) and with full Demrat chorus - that, now is a standard DEm rallying cry)
Bad, evil Demrats. . .but why were/are our Repubs sooooo willing to 'let it go'. . .
As for the 'rats' ; we know they do it. . .because they can. . .
Here are two *other* 9/11 factoids that didn't make the 9/11 Commission's report:9/11/2001 hi-jackers used ID of dead 9/11/2000 attacker to rent car
Even the goverment's cooperative star WoldCom witness got 5 years in the slammer today. If Berger does not get at least that much, both Bush and Gonzalez should be impeached. As it is the Congress needs to investigate Sandy Berger's plea deal with the DoJ in the first place. The miscreant government lawyers who arranged that deal need to be exposed and fired.
JUST IN CASE NO-ONE ELSE HAS POSTED IT (I haven't read all 400+ posts... sorry). THE RAW DATA FROM FOXNEWS. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165408,00.html
On Wednesday, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, sent the following letter to the former 9/11 Commission members, also known as the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, in which he rejects the Commission's claim that they were not briefed on "Able Danger".
Below is a copy of a letter sent by Congressman Curt Weldon to the former 9/11 Commission members:
August 10, 2005
The Honorable Thomas H. Kean, Chairman
The Honorable Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chairman
9/11 Public Discourse Project
One DuPont Circle, NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton:
I am contacting you to discuss an important issue that concerns the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and our country's efforts to ensure that such a calamity is never again allowed to occur. Your bipartisan work on The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States shed light on much that was unclear in the minds of the American people regarding what happened that fateful day, however there appears to be more to the story than the public has been told. I bring this before you because of my respect for you both, and for the 9-11 Commission's service to America.
Almost seven years ago, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 established the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, otherwise known as the Gilmore Commission. The Gilmore Commission reached many of the same conclusions as your panel, and in December of 2000 called for the creation of a "National Office for Combating Terrorism." I mention this because prior to 9/11, Congress was aware of many of the institutional obstacles to preventing a terrorist attack, and was actively attempting to address them. I know this because I authored the language establishing the Gilmore Commission.
In the 1990's, as chairman of the congressional subcommittee that oversaw research & development for the Department of Defense, I paid special attention to the activities of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Ft. Belvoir. During that time, I led a bipartisan delegation of Members of Congress to Vienna, Austria to meet with members of the Russian parliament, or Duma. Before leaving, I received a brief from the CIA on a Serbian individual that would be attending the meeting. The CIA provided me with a single paragraph of information. On the other hand, representatives of LIWA gave me five pages of far more in-depth analysis. This was cause for concern, but my debriefing with the CIA and FBI following the trip was cause for outright alarm: neither had ever heard of LIWA or the data mining capability it possessed.
As a result of experiences such as these, I introduced language into three successive Defense Authorization bills calling for the creation of an intelligence fusion center which I called NOAH, or National Operations and Analysis Hub. The NOAH concept is certainly familiar now, and is one of several recommendations made by your commission that has a basis in earlier acts of Congress. Despite my repeated efforts to establish NOAH, the CIA insisted that it would not be practical. Fortunately, this bureaucratic intransigence was overcome when Congress and President Bush acted in 2003 to create the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (now the National Counterterrorism Center). Unfortunately, it took the deaths of 3,000 people to bring us to the point where we could make this happen. Now, I am confident that under the able leadership of John Negroponte, the days of toleration for intelligence agencies that refuse to share information with each other are behind us.
The 9-11 Commission produced a book-length account of its findings, that the American people might educate themselves on the challenges facing our national effort to resist and defeat terrorism. Though under different circumstances, I eventually decided to do the same. I recently published a book critical of our intelligence agencies because even after 9/11, they were not getting the message. After failing to win the bureaucratic battle inside the Beltway, I decided to take my case to the American people.
In recent years, a reliable source that I refer to as "Ali" began providing me with detailed inside information on Iran's role in supporting terror and undermining the United States' global effort to eradicate it. I have forwarded literally hundreds of pages of information from Ali to the CIA, FBI, and DIA, as well as the appropriate congressional oversight committees. The response from our intelligence agencies has been underwhelming, to put it mildly. Worse, I have documented occasions where the CIA has outright lied to me. While the mid-level bureaucrats at Langley may not be interested in what I have to say, their new boss is. Porter Goss has all of the information I have gathered, and I know he is ready to do what it takes to challenge the circle-the-wagons culture of the CIA. And Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is energized as well. Director Goss and Chairman Hoekstra are both outstanding leaders that know each other well from their work together in the House of Representatives, and I will continue to strongly support their efforts at reform.
All of this background leads to the reason I am writing to you today. Yesterday the national news media began in-depth coverage of a story that is not new. In fact, I have been talking about it for some time. From 1998 to 2001, Army Intelligence and Special Operations Command spearheaded an effort called Able Danger that was intended to map out al Qaeda. According to individuals that were part of the project, Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat before 9/11. Team members believed that the Atta cell in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but somewhere along the food chain of Administration bureaucrats and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing the information to the FBI. These details are understandably of great interest to the American people, thus the recent media frenzy. However I have spoken on this topic for some time, in the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, on the floor of the House on June 27, 2005, and at various speaking engagements.
The impetus for this letter is my extreme disappointment in the recent, and false, claim of the 9-11 Commission staff that the Commission was never given access to any information on Able Danger. The 9-11 Commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter. Furthermore, commissioners never returned calls from a defense intelligence official that had made contact with them to discuss this issue as a follow on to a previous meeting.
In retrospect, it appears that my own suggestions to the Commission might have directed investigators in the direction of Able Danger, had they been heeded. I personally reached out to members of the Commission several times with information on the need for a national collaborative capability, of which Able Danger was a prototype. In the context of those discussions, I referenced LIWA and the work it had been doing prior to 9/11. My chief of staff physically handed a package containing this information to one of the commissioners at your Commission's appearance on April 13, 2004 in the Hart Senate Office Building. I have spoken with Governor Kean by phone on this subject, and my office delivered a package with this information to the 9-11 Commission staff via courier. When the Commission briefed Congress with their findings on July 22, 2004, I asked the very first question in exasperation: "Why didn't you let Members of Congress who were involved in these issues testify before, or meet with, the Commission?"
The 9-11 Commission took a very high-profile role in critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to outside information. The commissioners very publicly expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house. Therefore it is no small irony that the Commission would in the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when information of potentially critical importance was brought to its attention. The Commission's refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the Commission worked to expose.
Questions remain to be answered. The first: What lawyers in the Department of Defense made the decision in late 2000 not to pass the information from Able Danger to the FBI? And second: Why did the 9-11 Commission staff not find it necessary to pass this information to the Commissioners, and why did the 9-11 Commission staff not request full documentation of Able Danger from the team member that volunteered the information?
Answering these questions is the work of the commissioners now, and fear of tarnishing the Commission's legacy cannot be allowed to override the truth. The American people are counting on you not to "go native" by succumbing to the very temptations your Commission was assembled to indict. In the meantime, I have shared all that I know on this topic with the congressional committee chairmen that have oversight over the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of our intelligence gathering and analyzing agencies. You can rest assured that Congress will share your interest in how it is that this critical information is only now seeing the light of day.
Sincerely,
CURT WELDON
Member of Congress
cc:
Richard Ben-Veniste
Fred F. Fielding
Jamie S. Gorelick
Slade Gorton
Bob Kerrey
John F. Lehman
Timothy J. Roemer
James R. Thompson
Dennis Hastert
Peter Hoekstra
Frank Wolf
Pat Roberts
Richard Shelby
So - if someone was dumb enough to buy the book, can they get their money back?