Over a year ago, when it first came out that 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick (appointed by Democrats) was a former Clinton Administration Justice Department lawyer who had helped formulate the policies that controlled just how we gathered intelligence against terrorists — and how that information could and could not be shared. I wrote about it at the time, but never really followed up on it.
It turns out that what had me so outraged about Ms. Gorelick’s participation in the 9/11 Commission’s investigation was merely the tip of the iceberg. Daffyd ab Hugh of Captain’s Quarters has been doing some more digging, and it’s not pretty.
Many have defended Ms. Gorelick, by saying that her memo establishing a “wall” separating the FBI from other intelligence services only applied to the Justice Department, and didn’t cover other branches. After all, she worked for the Justice Department, not the government as a whole.
Well, no. It turns out that Ms. Gorelick had been general counsel to the Defense Department before she moved on to Justice.
Daffyd carefully labels established facts and separates out his speculation, but damn, he makes a compelling case. It’s starting to look more and more like the Democrats (at least, those who were part of or close to the Clinton administration, and those who appointed the Democratic members of the 9/11 commission), knew (or strongly suspected) that a huge chunk of blame for the intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks to succeed ought to be laid at the feet of the Clinton administration.
And now it’s finally starting to unravel.
CQ has been doing great follow-up on this topic. Just as Powerline/LGF had Rathergate and The Radio Equalizer/M. Malkin have Air ScAmerica, CQ will have Gorlick’s Wall.
I remember when there was debate as to who would comprise the investigative 9/11 Commission, and there were concerns about Gorlick and conflicts of interest. It would appear that those concerns are manifesting themselves as reality now… or it is getting to be a pretty suspicious coincidence. Gorlick’s fingerprints seem to have smudged the looking glass.
What kills me is that MSM has shown just about as much interest in this as they have about the OFF scam.
The MSM Jedis are saying, “Move along. These are not the agendas we’re looking for.”
Bush was sworn into office in the end of January 2001 iirc. The MSM measure has been that Bush had 9 months to find/sense/stop the 9/11 attacks.
How long did it take for Bush’s cabinet to be confirmed? From what I remember, the Democrats on the relevant committee(s) gave the nominees a hard time during confirmation, taking a long time to confirm them.
So should we measure from the second he was sworn in, or when he had a functioning cabinet? When was the last cabinet member sworn in?
What is so hard to figure out about this is why the administration that was illegaly using the FBI and it’s files of somewhere between 400 and 900 citizens was worried so much about information being shared on known members of an terrorist group. Has everyone forgotten Filegate? The Clintonistas thought it was fine and dandy to access information about political opponents but were worried about the legality of sharing information on members of al Qaeda? The moonbats keep wrongly insisting that Clinton wasn’t able to concentrate on the terrorist attacks on because of Ken Starr’s investigation by ignoring the calendar but the truth was they were far too busy criminally abusing their power by gathering information on republicans and trying to cover up those crimes. They weren’t distracted by Ken Starr’s investigation into Bill getting a little head from an intern, at the time they were hiding Rose Law Firm documents and covering up Filegate. In typical liberal fashion the democrats considered republicans a far greater threat than al Qaeda.
OnADime,
I seem to remember the ‘go slow’ confirmations that way too.
Also, I remember pundits at the time talking about how the recounts, re-recounts and supreme court wranglings delayed Bush from getting his Administration in order before taking office. Traditional etiquette says that the outgoing Admin cooperates with the incoming President-elect during the time from the election to the inauguration. That didn’t happen with Bush because the teenagers in the Clinton Admin dragged their feet until the Florida recount temper-tantrum was ‘settled’.
Did any of those delays affect our not detecting the 9/11 plot? I doubt it, but you never know.
What it does show, once again, is how childish the Clinton/Gore/Democrats were.