9/11 Commish Part Deaux

[NousDefionsDoc]

Should Jamie Gorelick be dismissed from the commission?

[DunbarFC]

I think more that she herself should step down

But I do feel that yes she should not be on the commission

[Radar Rider]

Yes. But that in and of itself is small potatoes. The "911 Commission" is much like the "Warren Commission". What's done is done, and this commission's results won't change much if anything. We will continue to have 13 separate intelligence agencies, with requisite competition for funds and the normal infighting. :(

[lrd]

I'm not sure what the rules say about whether she should resign or be forced to resign, but she needs to be answering questions as a witness under oath rather than asking questions.

[Gypsy]

Yes I believe she should be removed and questioned. I read somewhere just yesterday she has hopes of being the Atty Gen should sKerry win.

Here's some interesting reading in case anyone missed AG Ashcroft's testimony...

http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin200404151634.asp

April 15, 2004, 4:34 p.m.
Millennial Mistake
Jamie Gorelick’s dangerous “wall of separation.�



In his public testimony before the 9/11 Commission the other day, Attorney General John Ashcroft exposed Commissioner Jamie Gorelick's role in undermining the nation's security capabilities by issuing a directive insisting that the FBI and federal prosecutors ignore information gathered through intelligence investigations. But Ashcroft pointed to another document that also has potentially explosive revelations about the Clinton administration's security failures. Ashcroft stated, in part:



... [T]he Commission should study carefully the National Security Council plan to disrupt the al Qaeda network in the U.S. that our government failed to implement fully seventeen months before September 11.

The NSC's Millennium After Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 — with luck playing a major role. Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses. It is clear from the review that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government.

In March 2000, the review warns the prior Administration of a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here.

Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaeda network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls.

These are the same aggressive, often criticized law enforcement tactics we have unleashed for 31 months to stop another al Qaeda attack. These are the same tough tactics we deployed to catch Ali al-Marri, who was sent here by al Qaeda on September 10, 2001, to facilitate a second wave of terrorist attacks on Americans.

Despite the warnings and the clear vulnerabilities identified by the NSC in 2000, no new disruption strategy to attack the al Qaeda network within the United States was deployed. It was ignored in the Department's five-year counterterrorism strategy.

I did not see the highly-classified review before September 11. It was not among the 30 items upon which my predecessor briefed me during the transition. It was not advocated as a disruption strategy to me during the summer threat period by the NSC staff which wrote the review more than a year earlier.

I certainly cannot say why the blueprint for security was not followed in 2000. I do know from my personal experience that those who take the kind of tough measures called for in the plan will feel the heat. I've been there; I've done that. So the sense of urgency simply may not have overcome concern about the outcry and criticism which follows such tough tactics."

What is Ashcroft talking about? An article in Reader's Digest, "Codes, Clues, Confessions" (March 2002; by Kenneth R. Timmerman), provides some valuable insight. It states, in part:

French counter-terrorism magistrate, Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, first began tracking Ahmed Ressam back in 1996. As a Magistrate, he was allowed to use prosecutorial evidence, as well as share intelligence gathered by French intelligence agencies in his investigations and prosecutions. Between 1996 and 1999 he had gathered enough evidence to know that Ressam was part of al-Qaeda, what he called the "spider web." And that Ressam and al-Qaeda had made the U.S. a target, and that Ressam had moved from Europe to Canada at some point in 1999 to prepare his attack. Bruguiere shared this information with both Canadian and U.S. intelligence some time prior to 1999.

By March 1999, Bruguière had gathered enough information from terrorist cells he had broken up in France, Jordan, and Australia, to send a thick file to Canadian authorities, asking that they arrest Ressam and hold him for interrogation, but Ressam had already gone underground. 'On December 14, 1999 the news came of Ressam's arrest [near Seattle]. As you know, it was completely by chance. Just plain luck!'

U.S. Customs officer Diana Dean told the Digest she found the olive-skinned Canadian who identified himself as "Benni Norris" unusually nervous. The ferry from Vancouver had just chugged up to its slip at Port Angeles, Washington on the afternoon of December 14, 1999, and Norris lowered the window of his Chrysler 300. Despite the chilly air, he was sweating, Dean noticed. When she asked him to open his trunk, he bolted. After a brief chase, "Norris"/Ressam was arrested. In the trunk, they found 130 pounds of plastic explosives, two 22 ounce plastic bottles full of nitro glycol, and a map of LAX.

When the Department of Justice began interviewing "Norris"/Ressam, they didn't have a clue who he was. But Judge Bruguière did. He called the Department of Justice, and offered prosecutors his file on Ressam and his ties to al Qaeda. At the time, Bruguiere said, DOJ had no idea what a big catch they had, nor did DOJ have access to any intelligence about Ressam's ties to al-Qaeda. Ultimately, because of "The Wall" Bruguiere had to testify for seven hours in Seattle to lay out the al Qaeda connection to help U.S. prosecutors make their case against Ressam.

In other words, the "wall of separation" constructed by Jamie Gorelick made it virtually impossible for U.S. authorities to stop Ahmed Rassam, the "Millenium Bomber," by design or intention. It was left to blind luck. The NSC's Millennium After Action Review — which, based on Attorney General Ashcroft's testimony, must be devastating in its analysis of not only this event but of the Gorelick policy — remains classified. And, most significantly, it's likely the Review's criticisms and warnings were either ignored or rejected by the Clinton Justice Department.

Given all the past intelligence information that has been made public by the 9/11 Commission — including the August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief, which had never before been released — there appears to be no legitimate basis for the 9/11 Commission keeping the Review under lock and key. It's time to release it.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Anyone want to discuss this op-ed?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20786-2004Apr17?language=printer

The Truth About 'the Wall'

By Jamie S. Gorelick
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B07

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. Sept. 11 united this country in shock and grief; the lessons from it must be learned in a spirit of unity, not of partisan rancor.

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 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. In a nutshell, that law, as the courts read it, said intelligence investigators could conduct electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign targets under a more lenient standard than is required in ordinary criminal cases, but only if the "primary purpose" of the surveillance were foreign intelligence rather than a criminal prosecution.

Second, according to the FISA Court of Review, it was the justice departments under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1980s that began to read the statute as limiting the department's ability to obtain FISA orders if it intended to bring a criminal prosecution. The practice of prohibiting prosecutors from directing intelligence investigations was first put in place in those years as well. Then, in July 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno issued written guidelines that spelled out the steps FBI intelligence agents and criminal investigators and prosecutors needed to follow when sharing information. The point was to preserve the ability of prosecutors to use information collected by intelligence agents.

Third, Mr. Ashcroft's own deputy attorney general, Larry Thompson, formally reaffirmed the 1995 guidelines in an Aug. 6, 2001, memo addressed to the FBI and the Justice Department. Ashcroft has charged that the guidelines hampered the department's ability to pursue terrorists Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in August 2001, but his own department had endorsed those guidelines at the pivotal time.

Fourth, the memo I wrote in March 1995 -- which concerns information-sharing in two particular cases, including the original World Trade Center bombing -- permits freer coordination between intelligence and criminal investigators than was subsequently permitted by the 1995 guidelines or the 2001 Thompson memo. The purpose of my memo was to resolve a problem presented to me: facilitating investigations on both the intelligence side and criminal side at the same time. My memo directed agents on both sides to share information -- and, in particular, directed one agent to work on both the criminal and intelligence investigations -- to ensure the flow of information "over the wall." We set up special procedures because of the extraordinary circumstances and the necessity to prevent a court from throwing out any conviction in those cases. Had my memo been in place in August 2001 -- when, as Ashcroft said, FBI officials rejected a criminal warrant of Moussaoui because they feared "breaching the wall" -- it would have allowed those agents to obtain a criminal warrant without fear of jeopardizing an intelligence investigation.

Fifth, nothing in the 1995 guidelines prevented the sharing of information between criminal and intelligence investigators. Indeed, the guidelines require that FBI foreign intelligence agents share information with criminal investigators and prosecutors whenever they uncover facts suggesting that a crime has been or may be committed. The guidelines did set forth procedures, but those procedures implemented court decisions and, as noted, were reaffirmed by the Ashcroft Justice Department.

The Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11, together with an unprecedented appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, paved the way for the Justice Department to permit largely unrestricted information-sharing between intelligence and criminal investigators because the law changed the legal standard that had given rise to the guidelines in the first place. The Patriot Act says that electronic surveillance can be conducted in the United States against foreign threats as long as a "significant purpose" -- rather than the "primary purpose" -- is to obtain foreign intelligence.

This history has all been well-rehearsed in publicly available briefs, opinions and reports, all available to the 9/11 commission. I have -- consistent with the policy applied to all commissioners -- recused myself from any consideration of my actions or of the department while I was there. My fellow commissioners have spoken for themselves in rejecting the call by a few partisans that I step aside based upon false premises. I have worked hard to help the American public understand what happened on Sept. 11. I intend -- with my brethren on the commission -- to finish the job.

The writer is a member of the 9/11 commission and was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration from March 1994 through March 1997.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document_1995_gorelick_memo.pdf

Huh?

[CRad]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Should Jamie Gorelick be dismissed from the commission?

Why should she? No one else has stepped down or resigned. To me, it seems as if it's simply more finger pointing. Blame has been placed in every direction so why wouldn't some be directed at the commission? No one is at fault for any of this except the terrorists themselves and they are not being called to answer questions and won't be unless the commission decides to hold a seance. Of course, I halfway expect that any day now.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Lib

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally posted by CRad
Why should she?

Same reason Kobe Bryant isn't prosecuting himself.

[Solid]

What is it with these government typewriters?!

So, what's the opinion on Gorelick?

Solid

[Solid]

I don't think she should step down either. Nor should she be questioned. Ashcroft was just scapegoating, which is what everyone has been doing since the commission opened. IMHO, it's a waste of time. A far more effective response to 9-11 would be to go and kill/disrupt terrorists, which we are already doing.

Solid

[CRad]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Lib

Conspiracy theorist

[CRad]

Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer
Same reason Kobe Bryant isn't prosecuting himself.

And in that trial the Judge, Jury, Prosector, and Defense Attorney are all accusing one another of raping someone? Because accusing one another is what people are doing at the 9/11 Commission Hearings. It doesn't compare.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally posted by CRad
And in that trial the Judge, Jury, Prosector, and Defense Attorney are all accusing one another of shooting someone? Because that's what people are doing at the 9/11 Commission Hearings. It doesn't compare.

Foxes should not guard chicken coops.

[CRad]

Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer
Foxes should not guard chicken coops.

Totally agree. But, there are more foxes than Jamie Gorlick.

[Solid]

Yeah, but foxes shouldn't be trying to push other foxes out of guarding the coup. Everyone at the Comission is a fox in their own way.

Solid

[NousDefionsDoc]

The thing that aggravates me about the whole thing is nobody knew she wrote that memo? Out of the 250 million people in the US - it had to be somebody that a doubt was going to be raised about?

COME ON!

They should put Rudy in charge of the thing. Rudy and Alexander Haig and Colonel Hunt. What the hell is Ross Perot doing? He can't be that busy.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by CRad
Totally agree. But, there are more foxes than Jamie Gorlick.

Gorelick isn't a fox even on free tequila night at the Ft. Davis NCO Club.

[CRad]

Ross Perot and Alexander Haig I can get behind. Rudy nope and Col Hunt I don't about. Perot and Haig I think could be fair and impartial. They would ask good questions without bias.


Very funny about Gorlick not being a fox. Mean but funny.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Why not Rudy?

[Solid]

Which Rudy is this?

Solid

[brownapple]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Why not Rudy?

My question as well. Rudy was a federal prosecuter, is a very respected investigator, has a personal interest in finding out the reasons regardless of party, has a demonstrated ability to work with both parties, and a demonstrated ability to put his own opinions aside when it comes to investigations and prosecutions.

[DunbarFC]

Originally posted by Greenhat
My question as well. Rudy was a federal prosecuter, is a very respected investigator, has a personal interest in finding out the reasons regardless of party, has a demonstrated ability to work with both parties, and a demonstrated ability to put his own opinions aside when it comes to investigations and prosecutions.

Perhaps the fear that Rudy could emerge as a stronger candidate for Senate in New York or national office down the line

None of the commissioners now are in the same league as Rudy on those grounds.

Perhaps the goal was to keep the commission as low key as possible

[NousDefionsDoc]

Right! CRad is a lib and protecting Hillary for '08. :munchin

[Ambush Master]

Originally posted by Solid
Which Rudy is this?

Solid

Rudy Guiliani the man that was the Mayor of NYC when 9-11 went down.

[brownapple]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Right! CRad is a lib and protecting Hillary for '08. :munchin


Originally posted by CRad
I have trouble sitting down and reading books start to finish sometimes

That would seem to follow...

[CRad]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Right! CRad is a lib and protecting Hillary for '08. :munchin

You should bite your tongue for that. I hate that woman more than I hated her husband who, in my opinion, was nothing more than a Republican in a Democrat's suit. He stole every good idea he ever had from the Republicans. Everything I consider decent and noble about Republicans that son of bitch co-opted as his and made a mockery of Republican idealism. I could certainly understand the zeal with which he was investigated.

If Hillary is ever elected I'm taking a page from the Idiot's Handbook and leaving the country.

[CRad]

Originally posted by Greenhat
That would seem to follow...

Oh bite me. :p

[brownapple]

A little testy, eh?

[Solid]

Thanks AM, that's what I thought.

Guiliani is a good guy.

Solid

[NousDefionsDoc]

he's not dead.

[Solid]

Good point, I meant 'was' because he is no longer governor, and I meant it in reference to that portion of his political tenure.

I'll go an change it, though. Thanks for the correction.

Solid

[brownapple]

Originally posted by Solid
Good point, I meant 'was' because he is no longer governor,


He was never governor. He was Mayor of New York City.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Solid is a Brit - They call everybody "Govnor"

LOL

[Solid]

I'm sorry, gentlemen. I will endevour to post correct information from here on.

Thank you NDD for covering for me.

Solid

[lrd]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005031

WSJ.COM -- REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Gorelick's Stonewall
Newly released memos contradict her 9/11 Commission assertions.

Monday, May 3, 2004 12:01 a.m.

So President Bush and Vice President Cheney had their long-awaited sit-down with the 9/11 Commission last week--an event the Commissioners took so seriously that two of them walked out early citing prior commitments. Meanwhile, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan says the President disapproved of the Justice Department's release last week of further memos relating to the pre-Patriot Act "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement.

Sigh. We hope Mr. Bush is merely trying to rise above the partisanship that has surrounded the Commission since its grandstanding over Richard Clarke and Condoleezza Rice. Because what John Ashcroft and his team have revealed about the wall is by far the most important thing to come out of the hearings so far. So long as the 9/11 Commissioners are refusing to probe this matter further for fear of damaging a colleague, someone has to look out for the public's right to know.

Readers will recall that in his testimony Attorney General Ashcroft declassified a March 1995 memo written by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick--then Deputy Attorney General--instructing federal prosecutors and the FBI director to go "beyond what the law requires" in limiting their cooperation. Ms. Gorelick has since responded that she played only a subordinate role in setting this policy, and was only implementing settled law in any case. But the newly released memos appear to contradict Ms. Gorelick on both counts, further strengthening the case for having her resolve the issue in testimony and under oath.

A key piece of evidence is a June 13, 1995 memo to Attorney General Janet Reno from Mary Jo White, then U.S. Attorney and lead World Trade Center bombing prosecutor, and a recipient of the March memo Mr. Ashcroft referenced: "You have also asked whether I am generally comfortable with the instructions. It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney's Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required."

Ms. White added: "Our experience has been that the FBI labels of an investigation as intelligence or law enforcement can be quite arbitrary depending upon the personnel involved and that the most effective way to combat terrorism is with as few labels and walls as possible so that wherever permissible, the right and left hands are communicating" (emphases added).

Then Ms. White asked for a number of changes to the proposed guidelines, most of which Gorelick subordinate Michael Vatis recommends rejecting in a June 19 memo to Ms. Reno. That memo is accompanied by a handwritten note from Ms. Gorelick saying that she concurs.

Or to sum up the exchange: The principal U.S. terrorism prosecutor was trying to tell her boss that she foresaw a real problem with the new and "not legally required" wall policy, but Ms. Reno--again delegating that policy to Ms. Gorelick--largely rebuffed her concerns.

Commission Chairman Tom Kean has thus far been a staunch defender of Ms. Gorelick's refusal to testify. Perhaps he can explain how all of the above squares with Ms. Gorelick's recent remarks on CNN that "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-'90s, which I didn't sign, wasn't my policy by the way, it was the Attorney General's policy . . ."

We've never expected much from this Commission, but the stonewalling is getting ridiculous. Everyone knows the wall contributed to serious pre-9/11 lapses, such as the FBI's failure to search "20th Hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui's hard drive following his arrest on immigration violations in August 2001. Yet the Commissioners are treating reasonable requests that they explore the wall fully as some sort of affront.

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald summed up the core issue last October in testimony to Congress: "I was on a prosecution team in New York that began a criminal investigation of Osama bin Laden in early 1996. . . . We could talk to local police officers. We could talk to other U.S. government agencies. We could talk to foreign police officers. Even foreign intelligence personnel. . . . But there was one group of people we were not permitted to talk to. Who? The FBI agents across the street from us in lower Manhattan assigned to a parallel intelligence investigation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. We could not learn what information they had gathered. That was 'the wall.' "

That's also what the 9/11 Commissioners now seem determined to ignore. How long will they continue protecting their colleague at the cost of their own credibility?

Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[DunbarFC]

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/working/040412/koterba.gif