by Gary D. Halbert
April 20, 2004
So, have you been watching the 9-11 Commission hearings recently? Not much. That’s probably good. Not at all. That’s even better. The 9-11 Commission hearings have ranged from highly energized exchanges to utter boredom. The Commission’s public hearings (10 so far) have included an embarrassing amount of grandstanding and partisan spectacles, especially on the part of the Democrats.
Several of the commissioners seem much more intent on advancing their personal agendas and careers than they do about seeking the truth about 9-11. It is clear that some of the commissioners are jockeying for positions in a Kerry administration should he be the next president. Conflicts of interest abound on the Commission.
The Commission claims to have interviewed over 1,000 witnesses and yet little, if any, new information has been gleaned. Nevertheless, the Commission is expected to release a final report in late July which reportedly will claim that the 9-11 tragedy could have been prevented.
We’re not quite sure how the terror attacks could have been prevented, or even how the Commission has already drawn such a conclusion. We don’t understand how the CIA and the FBI, which were legally prohibited from sharing certain information going all the way back to 1978, would have or could have collaborated and connected all the dots pertaining to the 9-11 attacks. Even if they had, could we have prevented it? Apparently, the 9-11 Commission wants us to believe that the answer is yes.
It’s called the Blame Game. It is becoming increasingly clear that a majority of the members of the Commission wants to lay the blame for the 9-11 tragedy on President Bush. This week, we will examine the 9-11 Commission, its penchant for blaming Bush and its many conflicts of interest.
Makeup Of The Commission
The “National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” (aka, the 9-11 Commission) was created as a result of congressional legislation and was signed into law by President Bush in November 2002. The Commission was supposed to be a bipartisan group consisting of five Republicans and five Democrats, with a mandate to investigate “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001” and a budget (so far) of $15 million taxpayer dollars.
The chairman is Thomas Keen (Rep.), former New Jersey governor and longtime political insider. The vice chairman is Lee Hamilton (Dem.), who previously spent 34 years in the House of Representatives from Indiana.
The four Republican commissioners are Fred Fielding (former US attorney), Slade Gorton (former Senator and attorney), John Lehman (former Navy Secretary) and Timothy Roemer (former House member). The four Democratic commissioners are Richard Ben-Veniste (former US attorney), Bob Kerrey (former Senator), James Thompson (former IL governor and US attorney) and Jamie Gorelick (more details on her below).
The 9-11 Commission also has a staff of apprx. 80 people, over half of which are attorneys.
What We Have Learned – Nothing New
So what have we learned so far from the “blue ribbon” Commission? The media would have us believe that the following are new revelations, but they aren’t. For example, Bush received a briefing (PDB) from Condi Rice on August 6, 2001 which warned that Osama bin Laden was intent on attacking the US, possibly including the hijacking of commercial airliners. Yet this news generated a firestorm in the media back in May 2002.
We are also led to believe it is new news that the CIA had serious concerns about Zacarias Moussaoui (the 20th hijacker) after his suspicious behavior in a Minnesota flight school, but didn’t pass this information on the Bush administration. Ditto for the fact that the FBI knew that two of the other 9-11 hijackers were in the US, but they did not attempt to locate and arrest them due to federal restrictions on such activity. This is all old news.
Jamie Gorelick & The CIA/FBI “Wall”
One of the biggest controversies arising from the 9-11 Commission hearings – which is also not new news - has to do with the so-called “wall” between the CIA and the FBI, which prevented the sharing of information. 9-11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno in the Clinton administration, came under fire from the current Attorney General John Ashcroft. Ashcroft made public a classified memo that Gorelick sent to the FBI and others in the intelligence community, warning the agencies about sharing information.
The Gorelick memo was entitled, “Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations.” It contained new directives to the agencies regarding intelligence sharing and included the following:
Quote:
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“We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation [CIA] from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations [FBI]. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.”
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While many believed that Ashcroft was trying to lay the blame for the 9-11 tragedy on Gorelick, and in particular her 1995 memo, he did point out that the intelligence sharing wall had existed for years prior to 1995. Here are some excerpts from Ashcroft’s testimony before the Commission:
Quote:
“Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission… Government erected this wall. Government buttressed this wall. And before September 11, government was blinded by this wall…the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents…
The Justice Department was so addicted to the wall, it actually opposed legislation to lower the wall. Finally, the USA Patriot Act tore down this wall between our intelligence and law enforcement personnel in 2001. And when the Patriot Act was challenged, the FISA Court of Review upheld the law, ruling that the 1995 [Gorelick] guidelines were required by neither the Constitution nor the law…
But the simple fact of September 11 is this: We did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies… [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 11 was destined to fail.”
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Ashcroft’s testimony sparked a firestorm of criticism directed at Jamie Gorelick, and many groups called for her resignation from the Commission. As this is written, she has not stepped down, and I don’t expect she will. I have linked below an editorial she wrote in her own defense last week in the Washington Post.
The truth is, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was signed into law in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter. It placed restrictions on the sharing of so-called “foreign intelligence” (such as the CIA allegedly had on certain of the 9-11 hijackers) with other government agencies and/or law enforcement.
The point is, the information sharing wall existed long before Jamie Gorelick became Deputy AG under Clinton/Reno. This is not new news. It jumped into the spotlight, however, shortly after 9-11 when it became clear to the public that the CIA and the FBI were not communicating.