The Gorelick Wall Redux
The similarities in intelligence and interagency failures that led to both the underwear bomber attack on Christmas Day and the 9/11 attacks are striking. They appear to show a particular myopic mindset among appointees in the administrations of Clinton and Obama. One has to work very hard indeed to avoid noticing those similarities.
You may recall that the lack of interagency communication was identified by the 9/11 Commission as being the direct result of an official policy of the Clinton White House. That policy was most closely identified with Jamie Gorelick. Called the “Gorelick wall,” the policy is widely referred to as the biggest reason 19 Islamic terrorists were able to attack us on 9/11. The policy mandated a separation of criminal investigators and intelligence agents. No sharing of info. Gorelick herself proudly asserted in a Washington Post op-ed that she was the one who had erected that wall between the agencies.
The policy, however, was at best flawed, and in reality disastrous. A 2004 Wall Street Journal article described it thus:
At issue is the pre-Patriot Act “wall” that prevented communication between intelligence agents and criminal investigators — a wall, Mr. Ashcroft said, that meant “the old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail.” The Attorney General explained:
“In the days before September 11, the wall specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. After the FBI arrested Moussaoui, agents became suspicious of his interest in commercial aircraft and sought approval for a criminal warrant to search his computer. The warrant was rejected because FBI officials feared breaching the wall.
“When the CIA finally told the FBI that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were in the country in late August, agents in New York searched for the suspects. But because of the wall, FBI headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al-Qaeda attack to join the hunt for the suspected terrorists.
“At that time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote headquarters, quote, ‘Whatever has happened to this — someday someone will die — and wall or not — the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain ‘problems.’”
The bottom line is that, like the Clinton administration, the Obama administration has approached al-Qaeda’s war on us thinking that it could be contained and dealt with in the civilian criminal justice system. We don’t, in other words, need to treat this as a war. We may or may not have returned officially to the Gorelick policy, but we returned to the attitude which gave us the policy when we put Democrats back in charge of the executive branch.
Granted that two data points may not prove a trend, but there’s one more puzzle piece on this line: 9/11 wasn’t the first attack on the World Trade Center. The first one occurred under Bill Clinton in 1993. Starting a war was exactly al-Qaeda’s purpose then. Despite this, Bill Clinton decided to not treat it as a war. Instead, the perpetrators of that attack were considered to be a band of outlaws to be dealt with by our criminal justice system and diplomacy.
Finally someone makes the connection and speaks aloud. THANK YOU!
BTW, wasn’t Gorelick one of the revolving door CEOs of Fannie or Freddie by which the Democrats gave their buds a few months at a time robbing the public piggy bank? Or was it Harmon? Or Att.Gen. Holder? Or Raines?
Oops. Come to think of it, it was all of them.
Billions.
Indeed, so it was. We certainly have a target-rich environment, don’t we?
Still blaming Bush’s predecessor?
I shuld think the answer to that question is rather obvious; I’m pointing up an attitude that is common to both Democrat administrations. How much clearer does that comparison have to be?
Is it not obvious that the long struggle is nearly over?
Is it not obvious that the triumph of Islam is inevitable?
There is little time left.
Cease provoking the soldiers of Allah (swt).
Cease your blasphemies against Allah (swt) and His Messenger Muhammed (saw).
Cease oppressing Muslims.
Renounce your false religions.
Embrace Islam now and live in peace in submission to the will of Almighty Allah (swt).
Your grandchildren will be Muslim.
Allahu akbar!
It isn’t so much a “wall” that I am worried about, I am more concerned with the PC blindfolds everyone in Washington and most of the media are wearing. It prevents them from seeing who the real enemy is – ISLAM. Not al Qaeda, ISLAM. Islam has delcared war on the infidel world, they call it jihad, and it it long past time when we should be calling it jihad as well.
America Muslim: a contradiction in terms.
Jamie Gorelick [pronounced as a two syllable word] belongs in prison. Two reasons: Her “wall” that had no basis in the Constitution or Congressional legislation, but was only to ‘avoid the appearance’ of cross-institution information passage, and 2) her position at FanFred {I don’t give a Frack which one, they are Huey Dewey and Louey Twins as far as I am concerned) where she earned something like $21 million doing NOTHING!!! with no prior experience required.
This is Washington DC political “good old boy” networking at its grossest example.
She belongs in jail. If Libby belongs for mis-remembering, she belongs for ~2700 killed because of her bad judgement.
tomw
YEah!!! I am so mad at this crap that I could chew nails and spit the results at every democRAT I can find. This is so WRONG and so ignored by the MSM hacks.
Is it not obvious that the long struggle is nearly over?
Is it not obvious that the triumph of Islam is inevitable?
*** Nope. Quite the contrary.
*** Hell, 1.5 billion Muslims can’t even defeat 7 million Israelis.
There is little time left.
*** The train already left.
Cease provoking the soldiers of Allah
Cease your blasphemies against Allah and His Messenger Muhammed.
Cease oppressing Muslims.
*** Like 3,000 Muslims who died in the World Trade Center?
*** Like hundreds of Muslims who died in train stations in London, Madrid, India, etc?
*** Like hundreds of Muslims who died when sewer-side bombers in Africa tried to attack US Embassies?
*** Oh wait, those weren’t Muslims who were murdered … they were innocent civilians, trying to live their lives.
Embrace Islam now and live in peace in submission to the will of Almighty Allah.
*** Nah … but here, have this Tract, explaining why you should convert to Christianity.
Your grandchildren will be Muslim.
*** YOUR grandchildren will be punk rockers.
Allahu akbar!
*** Hail Mary, full of grace.
Jamey Gorelick’s career would make anyone who cares about this country sick. After her work for Janet Reno, she went on to make millions as a top exec for Fanny. For the ultimate in irony, she was put on the “911 Commission”, presumably to help cover up her part in making the attack possible. http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/unsung_contributor_to_the_fannie_mae_disaster_jamie_gorelick