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War on Terror 9/11 commission members want claim on Atta pursued WASHINGTON – Members of the commission that uncovered the government's failures to share intelligence among agencies before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks want to know whether U.S. defense intelligence officials knew for more than a year that four of the hijackers were part of an al-Qaeda cell but failed to tell law enforcement. Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the now-disbanded commission, said Tuesday that members of the Sept. 11 commission could issue a statement by the end of the week after reviewing claims that defense intelligence officials had identified ringleader...

The Bush-bashers who have relentlessly accused the president and his War on Terror team of acting like jack-booted bigots are now imperiously attacking them for acting like light-footed fumblers. This self-serving display of liberal hypocrisy has provided more idiotic entertainment than "The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour." In an editorial that embodies the Left's unmitigated gall, the New York Times castigated President Bush for not doing enough after receiving an Aug. 6, 2001, briefing memo warning vaguely of bin Laden-planned domestic terrorism. According to the Times, Bush should have "rushed back to the White House, assembled all his top advisers...

The 9/11 commission may have found the smoking gun that prevented the FBI and CIA from "connecting the dots." The smoking gun is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act created in 1978. The FISA, in and of itself, meant the "old national intelligence service in place on Sept. 11, 2001, was destined to fail," according to testimony Tuesday by Attorney General John Ashcroft. To add fuel to the fire, a memo dated March 4, 1995, raised the bar or "wall" that kept our FBI and CIA from talking and sharing information, which directly impeded on-going terrorist investigations. This memo was implemented...

The grandstanding Richard Clarke having made apologies all the rage, one should expect that President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will be getting one in the next day or two. Something like this: Dear Mr. President and Dr. Rice: Very sorry about all that high dudgeon a couple of weeks ago. You remember, when we couldn't pass a microphone, a pencil, or a camera without perorations about the vital need to have the President waive executive privilege and ignore scads of history so Dr. Rice could be permitted to testify under oath and publicly (and improve our Nielson...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117538/posts Sensenbrenner Calls on Gorelick to Resign From Sept. 11 CommissionTampa Bay on line (AP) ^ | 04-14-04 | The Associated Press Kinda blows a hole the size of the Grand Canyon into this whole "Independent, Non-partisan" 9/11 Commission, eh?The only person who previously knew about this memo was Gorelick and she was covering up to protect herself.     -And already, information on the internet is being "scrubbed"-- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117286/posts?page=26#26     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117388/posts GORELICK GATE: Gorelick Memo Exposes 'Feckless' Clinton PolicyInsight On The News ^ | April 13, 2004 | By Kenneth R. Timmerman     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1117383/posts GORELICK GATE: Rule...

<p>April 15, 2004 -- House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner has demanded the resignation of Jamie Gorelick as a member of the federal 9/11 Commission. Frankly, given her blatant conflicts of interest, she should never have been appointed in the first place.</p>

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...

<p>Pressure is growing for Jamie S. Gorelick to resign from the September 11 commission for what the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has called "an inherent conflict of interest."</p> <p>Ms. Gorelick, who served in the No. 2 position in the Clinton Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno, was the author of a 1995 directive to the FBI, which repeatedly has been cited in testimony as a major hindrance to antiterrorism efforts prior to the 2001 attacks.</p>

Last week, 9-11 commissioner John Lehman revealed that "it was the policy (before 9-11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory." Hmmm ... Is 19 more than two? Why, yes, I believe it is. So if two Jordanian cab drivers are searched before boarding a flight out of Newark, Osama bin Laden could then board that plane without being questioned. I'm no security expert, but I'm pretty sure this gives terrorists an opening for an attack. In a sane world, Lehman's statement...

The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks may be about to implode amidst partisan recriminations and charges of conflict of interest, with the chairman House Judiciary Committee calling on one of the panel's leading members to resign. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., demanded on Wednesday that former Clinton administration deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick resign from the investigation, charging that she "has an inherent conflict of interest as the author of this memo and as a government official at the center of the events in question." The Gorelick memo, issued under the authority of the Justice Department in 1995,...

Gorelick Caught In Lie - Gorelick Claims She Did Not Author or Sign the Memo That Bears Her Name and Initials. When asked specifically by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if she wrote the "memorandum in '95 that helped establish the so-called walls between the FBI and CIA," Gorelick distanced herself from the matter: "No, and again, I would refer you back to what others on the commission have said. The wall was a creature of statute. It's existed since the mid 1980s. And while it's too lengthy to go into, basically the policy that was put out in the mid-nineties, which...

Former chief White House political adviser Dick Morris charged Wednesday night that 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick is the U.S. public official "most responsible for 9/11 happening." "Of all of the public officials in the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, the one who is most directly, in my judgment, responsible for 9/11 happening is Jamie Gorelick," Morris told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." Morris cited the now notorious Gorelick memo, a document she issued in 1995 while serving as deputy attorney general that impeded the U.S.'s war on terrorism. "This woman is bad news," Morris charged. "She ran the...

<p>September 11 commission member Jamie Gorelick, as deputy attorney general for three years beginning in 1994, "was an architect of the government's self-imposed procedural wall, intentionally erected to prevent intelligence agents from pooling information with their law-enforcement counterparts," writes Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others. "That is not partisan carping. That is a matter of objective fact. That wall was not only a deliberate and unnecessary impediment to information sharing; it bred a culture of intelligence dysfunction. It told national security agents in the field that there were other values, higher interests, that transcended connecting the dots and getting it right. It set them up to fail," Mr. McCarthy said in an opinion piece at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com). "To hear Gorelick lecture witnesses about intelligence lapses is breathtaking," he added.</p>

Jamie Gorelick Partner 2445 M Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20037 Phone: 202-663-6500 Fax: 202-663-6363 Jamie.Gorelick@wilmer.com Jamie Gorelick's career has spanned the legal, policy, and corporate landscape. As one of Washington's best-known litigators she has represented corporations and individuals on a wide array of problems, particularly in the regulatory and enforcement arenas. She has particular experience in corporate governance and compliance, as well as internal corporate investigations and is the co-author of the leading treatise on the maintenance of corporate documents. Ms. Gorelick's leadership in the bar was recognized when she served as President of the District of Columbia Bar. In...

Post Questions the 911 Commission Needs to Ask Gorelick

Alexandria, Va.: Since Ms. Gorelick played a major role in assuring such a failure would occur, shouldn't she be removed from the commission and be forced to testify herself? Dana Priest: Well, they knew her role would be an issue so she's recused herself from asking certain questions. Commission exec. Zelikow, too, has a conflict since he worked with Rice.

RUSH: Back now to the John Ashcroft audio sound bites from yesterday's testimony before the "Let's Get Bush" commission. This is part of his opening statement. ASHCROFT: The simple fact of September 11th is this. We did not know an attack was coming, because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies. Our agents were isolated by government-imposed walls, handcuffed by government-imposed restrictions, and starved for basic information technology. The old national intelligence system in place on September 11th was destined to fail. RUSH: He did not us mistakenly or accidentally say, "We did not know...

Sept. 11 Highlights Associated Press Highlights of Wednesday's Sept. 11 commission hearing on intelligence and law enforcement issues related to the 2001 terror attacks. GORELICK _House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, D-Wis., said commission member Jamie Gorelick should step down because of a memo she wrote as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration. The memo regarded the "wall" separating FBI criminal and intelligence operations. Gorelick says she will not step down.INTELLIGENCE FAILURES _The CIA and other intelligence agencies tracked the rise of al-Qaida but never fully appreciated the threat it posed to the United States or the intense interest...

The activities of the 9/11 commission remind us that official Washington can be sorted by degrees of culpability. It is not to be cynical to suggest that what passes for inquest in the capital is often an elaborate effort to find a just dispensation of blame. How outcomes are received by the public mostly depends on whether an investigative panel succeeds at preserving the appearance of "independence," or at least "balance." Yet, by some trick of fortune, Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general under President Clinton, is right now in the position of asking the questions, not answering them....