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<p>Newly released Justice Department memos show that September 11 panel commissioner Jamie S. Gorelick was more intimately involved than previously thought with hampering communications between U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies fighting terrorism.</p> <p>As the No. 2 person in the Clinton Justice Department, Ms. Gorelick rejected advice from the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who warned against placing more limits on communications between law-enforcement officials and prosecutors pursuing counterterrorism cases, according to several internal documents written in summer 1995.</p>

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft Monday requesting that the Department of Justice “produce any records relating to Deputy Attorney General (Jamie) Gorelick’s involvement in the development and promulgation of Attorney General Reno’s Procedures for Contacts Between the FBI and the Criminal Division Concerning Foreign Intelligence and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations.” The letter was in response to the 9/11 Commission’s failure to hear testimony from a key Clinton administration Justice Department official, preventing the Congress from receiving a full accounting of intelligence and law enforcement procedures that led to the...

(CNSNews.com) - A senior U.S. government official has told CNSNews.com that the 1995 memo written by former Assistant Attorney General Jamie Gorelick and currently at issue in the 9/11 Commission's investigation of U.S. intelligence failures, also created "a roadblock" to the probe of the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign fundraising scandal. The memo's relevance in the investigation of the fundraising scandal has received scant attention in the media, but four different sources, including the government official, have explained and corroborated details of the connection for CNSNews.com. The CNSNews.com sources question whether the guidelines purportedly put in place by Gorelick in 1995...

Gorelick Memo Allegedly Impeded Probe of Clinton Fundraising Scandal By Scott Wheeler CNSNews.com Staff Writer April 26, 2004 (CNSNews.com) - A senior U.S. government official has told CNSNews.com that the 1995 memo written by former Assistant Attorney General Jamie Gorelick and currently at issue in the 9/11 Commission's investigation of U.S. intelligence failures, also created "a roadblock" to the probe of the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign fundraising scandal. The memo's relevance in the investigation of the fundraising scandal has received scant attention in the media, but four different sources, including the government official, have explained and corroborated details of the...

<p>September 11 commission member Jamie S. Gorelick, who recused herself from questioning some Clinton administration officials last week, still can help draft parts of the board's final report on the "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement that she defended while in the Clinton Justice Department.</p>

The Gorelick Rosetta Stone Has 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick's famous memo provided the missing link between Chinagate and 9/11? 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. -- The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 15, 2004 Hats off to the Wall Street Journal for a spectacular observation, perhaps the Rosetta Stone of postmillennial national security. Let its...

<p>September 11 commission member Jamie S. Gorelick, who recused herself from questioning some Clinton administration officials last week, still can help draft parts of the board's final report on the "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement that she defended while in the Clinton Justice Department.</p>

The Washington Post's Tuesday editorial on, as the editors there call it, "Mr. Ashcroft's Smear," is a transparent effort to help close ranks around beleaguered Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, the former Clinton-administration deputy attorney general whose conflict of interest has riven the 9/11 Commission. For the most part, it adopts wholesale the talking points Gorelick herself ran with in an op-ed that the Post published on Sunday. Though disingenuous, even taken at face value, the editorial actually supports the case for recusal. With knee-jerk predictability, the Post finds that the real culprit in this drama is not Gorelick but rather the...

IN HIS TESTIMONY last week before the Sept. 11 commission, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft loosed a remarkable attack on Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member who served as deputy attorney general during part of the Clinton administration. The "single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem," Ashcroft said, "was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," and the "basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum" from 1995 -- which Mr. Ashcroft had conveniently declassified for the hearing. "Full disclosure," he said, "compels me to inform you that...

Must reading today is an insightful Chicago Sun-Times op-ed by Mary Laney, entitled 9/11 PANEL MEMBER SHOULD STEP DOWN!. It concerns the 9/11 Commission hearings which have recently deteriorated into a modern version of the Salem witch trials, except these days the wicked witch is the Bush administration, including such alleged sorcerers as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condaleeza Rice. Talk about a rigged anti-Bush proceedings. The New York Times couldn't be happier. The problem is that an appearance at the hearings by the always forthright U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft, revealed a blatant conflict of interest on the...

The Gorelick memo, issued under the authority of the Justice Department in 1995, was blamed by Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday for hampering the ability of the FBI and CIA to cooperate in terrorist investigations. Other aspects of Gorelick's tenure suggest more conflicts, such as questions about what role, if any, she played in advising President Clinton that there was no legal basis to extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S. when he was offered by Sudan [to the U.S.] in 1996.....

<p>The commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has a critical dual mission to fulfill -- to help our nation understand how the worst assault on our homeland since Pearl Harbor could have occurred and to outline reforms to prevent new acts of terrorism. Under the leadership of former governor Tom Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the commission has acted with professionalism and skill. Its hearings and the reports it has released have been highly informative, if often disturbing.</p>

From Sam Ervin to Earl Warren to Joseph McCarthy, high-powered investigative hearings in Washington have created heroes and villains, made and broken political careers, and rewritten history and biographies in unexpected ways. The Sept. 11 commission's hearings seem certain to take their place in that gallery. In three months, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States will offer its report on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the verdict is coming in on the players in this drama in a city that thrives on anointing winners and losers, and on spotting the political implications behind even...

The commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has a critical dual mission to fulfill -- to help our nation understand how the worst assault on our homeland since Pearl Harbor could have occurred and to outline reforms to prevent new acts of terrorism. ***************SNIP***************** At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents" and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo. This is simply not true. First, I did not invent the "wall," which...

Freep this: Hardball Poll ^       Posted by feedback doctorOn 04/16/2004 4:14:20 PM PDT with 26 comments MSNBC Hardball ^ | 04/16/2004 | msnbc         Demagoguing September 11 ^       Posted by kattracksOn 05/20/2002 10:39:44 PM PDT with 12 comments Washington Times ^ | 5/21/02         9/11 COMMISSION SCANDAL -- Democrat 9/11 Commissioner May Have "Enabled" 9/11 Terrorism!  ^       Posted by clintonbaiterOn 04/16/2004 12:50:00 PM PDT with 36 comments iconoclast.ca ^         'Third Terrorist' author on Farah show (Jayna Davis on OKC bombing)  ^  ...

<p>Just a few days ago, Democrats on Capitol Hill seemed quite eager to make political hay out of news reports suggesting that President Bush might have known in advance about the September 11 attacks. Prominent Democrats like Sens. Tom Daschle, Hillary Rodham Clinton and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt have loudly demanded investigations into what the administration knew about the possibility that terrorists were preparing to attack the United States.</p>

The Gorelick memo, issued under the authority of the Justice Department in 1995, was blamed by Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday for hampering the ability of the FBI and CIA to cooperate in terrorist investigations. Other aspects of Gorelick's tenure suggest more conflicts, such as questions about what role, if any, she played in advising President Clinton that there was no legal basis to extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S. when he was offered by Sudan [to the U.S.] in 1996.....

As a last question to former FBI head Louis Freeh, 9-11 Commissioner John Lehman asked whether Freeh was familiar with the information Jayna Davis has gathered for her new book, "The Third Terrorist." Davis, a former Oklahoma City newswoman, makes a powerful case that Terry Nichols had conspired with convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines and that Timothy McVeigh had received direct aid in the construction and delivery of the bomb from, among others, likely Iraqi agent, Hussain Al-Hussaini, the alleged John Doe #2. This was an excellent question. Lehman, however, addressed it to the wrong...

The next shoe to drop in the Gorelick-gate scandal may be a still-classified report on the Millennium bomb plot that faults Gorelick's "wall" of separation between prosecutors and intelligence gatherers for nearly blowing the Millennium Bomb Plot probe. Writing in National Review Online, Landmark Legal Foundation President Mark Levin notes that the Commission is sitting on a damaging post-Millennium-Plot report that chronicles the impact of Gorelick's terrorist-friendly directive, which Attorney General John Ashcroft alluded to on during his Wednesday testimony. Dubbed the Millennium After Action Review by the Clinton National Security Council, Ashcroft said the report chronicles how al...