Centerfield

Don't cry, Todd. Rather, revel in the American political process. This whole commission reminds me of America's tendency to re-fight the last war.

What do you think of Mr. Bush's endorsement of Sharon's "courageous" West Bank withdrawal plan? Perhaps he forgot he's running for re-election.

Greg, what a lot we've got, eh? On the left we have protesters rooting for our enemies and apologists for Palestinian suicide bombers whose leadersthinks exterminating all jews is just a good start. On the right we have a President calling a war criminal courageous and acknowledging "facts on the ground."

My take on this latter acknowledgement is that it suggests Bush is at best not serious enough to do all of his middle east homework, so he's settled for the Cliff Notes. Sharon has to know what would eventually be the fate of settlers left in the area if it actually became autonomously Palestinian. Which suggests they're being left there as a pretext for coming back in when Sharon next feels like it. Not much room for hope.

Upon reflection, it doesn't make me want to cry so much as it makes me want to scream. The whole process is turning into an effing disgrace.

Todd: What do you mean "turning" into an effing disgrace?

Were you really expecting anything less?

Yes tallan, naive me did expect something more. Two weeks ago I saw Kean and Hamilton appear together and they pledged to work toward a bi-partisan consensus and a unanimous report. Right now, that seems impossible.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that John Ashcroft would be at the bottom of an attempt by the repugs to embarrass Ms Gorelick. That's the way John plays dirty and underhanded. But he's such an upright Christian guy. Don't you just know his God is so proud of him?

The nature of the "wall" that Ms. Gorelick somehow or other contributed to is definitely worth discussing. And since she was involved, it's probably not appropriate for her to also participate in a judgement role, although she should participate in the role of providing information.

Everything I have read about this so far ( I admit I haven't hunted!) has been content-free character assassination. Let find out more about this "wall," how it works, what problems it causes, what things it protects against, and see if we can do a better job.

And then, let's give John Ashcroft a swirlie, apparently the ones he got in high school didn't take.

The wall is between the criminal investigative division of the FBI and the counterterrorism unit of the FBI. As stated in the memo,

"Because the counterintelligence investigation will involve the use of surveilance techniques authorised under the Foreign Interlligence Surveillance Act... we believe it is preduent to establish a set of instructions. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance the FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation"

In other words, they don't want there to be an appearance that secret warrentless phone taps against foreign nationals are being used illegally to gather information for crimininal prosecutions. This wall did not prevent the FBI from doing anything, just prevented the Counterterrorism branch from telling criminal prosecutors things that the criminal prosecutors were not allowed to use to prosecute crimes. Additionally, it was not a policy memo, it was specifically about the WTC bombers.

Read the memo. It's right, and it's clean. That anyone even thinks it makes Gorelick look bad is very, very wrong. The problem was with the wall between the CIA and the FBI counterterrorism, not the wall between FBI counterterrorism and federal prosecutors.

Too many attorneys--all the way around.
They have hemorraged this society--in many ways too numerous to cite here.

Janus

Thanks hippocrite. Like I've said before, I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea of this wall, it all depends on its nature, and how it works in practice. BTW, can you source that quote or point out other relevant primary sources? I'd like to follow up and find out a little more if i can.

Based on what you've cited, it doesn't sound especially troubling to me. It makes general sense to me anyway that the various intelligence agencies be allowed to pool information to assemble an effective mosaic of terrorist activity. But there needs to be some sort of principle in place that makes it hard for this mosaic to be used for non-terrorism related activities.

Like I've said, I don't know a whole lot of details and am open to more info, but it seems like there may indeed be some scapegoating going on. It does make some sense for Gorelick to recuse herself from judgements over policy areas in which she was once involved, but I'm not willing to let her be the only left standing in a game of musical chairs at an FBI @ss-covering festival.

Hipocrite,

I read the memo and I agree that in no way does it make Gorelick look bad.

Perhaps you could answer this question because, quite frankly, I didn't quite understand the memo thoroughly: Did the policy of the memo prevent FBI criminal investigators who were in charge of the Moussoui case from telling their counterparts about information in regards to terrorism? Also, it seems, as I understand it, that should the counter-terrorism division got a court order to view the documents on Moussoui's computer, it would not have been usable by the criminal investigation team. Is that correct?

I'm not trying to make a point one way or the other. I'm just trying to understand it better.

Section 3 deals with pro-active efforts taken by the USAO and criminal agents (contact the FCI to avoid getting in their way)

Section 5 details how information related to cases and investigations will be given to all 3 agencies (USAO, OIPR, criminal), while CT info will be given only to OIPR.

In other words, it's a one-way wall. It's about preventing CT info from polluting criminal cases, not about preventing criminal info from touching CTs hands.