Politics: J'accuse!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
See? Why can't we all get along?

I'll go along with the profit part.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Want to bet? There is nothing that has stuck, and besides the point of the 9/11 ads has always been that Bush has proven himself capable of repsonding to this challenge- not that things weren't screwed up before.

"Nothing sticking" from the commission hearings is irrelevant re: whether those ads continue to run or not.

That decision will turn far more on what's happening in places like Fallujah, Baghdad and Nassiryah. If the administration turns things around, we'll see them incessantly. If they don't, they'll get shelved.

Either way, we can expect to see lots of sand-swept images this summer and fall, either during the news or on commercial breaks.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone_Slothrop
Welcome to life in a democracy. It's a circus because people care, and because politicians are accountable to us.

I'd like to buy the world a coke, and keep it company.

Coming from a skeptic such as yourself, this is one of the strangest things I've read on here.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I have it on good authority from the waiters at Plouf that Ty is actually Belgian (and FWIW a big tipper)

Although I find this statement from their website, well, gay:

Plouf: The sound a stone makes when it drops into a French stream.

the menu does look delish:

http://www.plouf.citysearch.com/

That duck confit salad sure does beat the subway sub I just ate.

So Ty, any recs on what to order?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Yes.

Which doesn't change for one bit what I've been saying all along about this commission - that it should be merely a fact-finding panel intent on cleaning up our woefully unprepared Intelligence community and not that the grandstanding, he-said, she-said, Bush sucks, no Clinton does, useless circus sideshow that it has become.

The commission is a partisan joke.

I hear that there is another group of 9/11 survivors/victim's family members that are not pleased at all with the group that pushed for the commission and how they are behaving.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Not Me
I hear that there is another group of 9/11 survivors/victim's family members that are not pleased at all with the group that pushed for the commission and how they are behaving.

At last count, I saw seven different groups, with seven different agendas and seven different publicists, and seven different sets of "what 9/11 obviously proves."

[Not Me]

Originally posted by bilmore
At last count, I saw seven different groups, with seven different agendas and seven different publicists, and seven different sets of "what 9/11 obviously proves."

Some of the groups are very partisan in their agendas. While I applaud them for getting involved in the political process, I am offended by their use of their connection to 9/11 to push their political agendas.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"And as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way."

—President Bush, White House press conference, April 13

"It was no accident that President Bush passed up five chances on Tuesday night to offer regrets, contrition or an acknowledgement that he might have made mistakes in handling the Sept. 11 attacks or the war in Iraq. … One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to yield."

—New York Times, April 15

cites

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone_Slothrop
"And as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way."

—President Bush, White House press conference, April 13

"It was no accident that President Bush passed up five chances on Tuesday night to offer regrets, contrition or an acknowledgement that he might have made mistakes in handling the Sept. 11 attacks or the war in Iraq. … One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to yield."

—New York Times, April 15

So, now that the NYT has spoken, have you changed your personal assessment of Bush from (i) stubborn jackass who fails to acknowlege any flaws to (ii) savvy Clintonesque politico who carefully follows polling trends?

ETA - I don't agree with either

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
"And as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way."

—President Bush, White House press conference, April 13

"It was no accident that President Bush passed up five chances on Tuesday night to offer regrets, contrition or an acknowledgement that he might have made mistakes in handling the Sept. 11 attacks or the war in Iraq. … One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to yield."

—New York Times, April 15

cites

Who was the advisor who said this?

[Not Me]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/l...20040414.shtml

"During the course of those investigations," wrote Gorelick in 1995, "significant counterintelligence information has been developed related to the activities and plans of agents of foreign powers operating in this country and overseas, including previously unknown connections between separate terrorist groups." But Gorelick wanted to make sure that the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. "(W)e believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. 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."

The problem, of course, is that the inability to share information is precisely what hampered federal agents in tracking down the 9-11 hijackers. As Attorney General Ashcroft testified, this artificial wall impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who was arrested prior to the 9-11 attack, as well as Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, both of whom were identified by the CIA as suspected terrorists possibly in the United States prior to their participation in those terrible attacks. "Because of the wall, FBI Headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join in the hunt for the suspected terrorists," Ashcroft told the commission.

"At the time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote Headquarters," said Ashcroft, "quote, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not -- the public will not understand why . . .'"

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Not Me
Who was the advisor who said this?

You'll need to subpoena Adam Nagourney to find out.

[Not Me]

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial...12/1058375.asp

"We had a structural problem in the United States, and that structural problem was that we did not share domestic and foreign intelligence in a way to make a product for policymakers," Rice testified.

Nowhere was the problem better illustrated than in the case of 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi; both were linked by the CIA to al-Qaida, and the agency knew they had entered the United States in summer 2001.

On Sept. 11, 2001, they were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon.

The legal wall, according to an FBI agent who worked the case, prevented New York agents involved in an al-Qaida criminal investigation from trying to track the two men down because officials at the FBI's National Security Law Unit decided that it had to remain as an intelligence case.

The agent, according to congressional investigators, responded with the Aug. 29, 2001, e-mail message to an FBI analyst he was working with wondering how the FBI legal decision would be viewed in the event of a catastrophic attack, "especially since the biggest threat to us now, (Osama bin Laden), is getting the most "protection.' "

The e-mail message came out as part of Congress' joint intelligence inquiry into 9/11.

The wall dates from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Courts have interpreted it as prohibiting the routine sharing of information gathered in U.S. intelligence investigations with law enforcement officials pursuing criminal probes.

In 1995, then-Attorney General Reno issued guidelines for FBI handling of intelligence information that limited contact with criminal investigators. In practice, according to court documents, the guidelines prevented FBI intelligence agents from communicating with the Criminal Division on intelligence or counterintelligence cases.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Here's an article from today's NYT that's a sort of primer on "the wall." I can't figure out why anyone would use this stuff to attack Gorelick -- I mean I can, but Ashcroft was the AG in August, 2001. I don't know enough about this area of law to know whether the FISC ruling should have been foreseen, but it sounds like a lot of smart people didn't think so over many years.


INTELLIGENCE SHARING
Rule Created Legal 'Wall' to Sharing Information
By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: April 14, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 13 — On Tuesday, witnesses and commissioners pondered the role of "the wall" in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Attorney General John Ashcroft told the 9/11 commission that "the wall," a legal barrier in the government preventing intelligence investigators from sharing information with criminal investigators, was the most important structural impediment to preventing the attacks.

The wall, which has since been demolished by a special appeals court ruling, was part of a body of law that was little known to the public. It involved secret testimony and decisions by a special federal court that ruled on the requests of government investigators to install wiretaps or other listening devices on people suspected of being involved in espionage. The 1978 law that created the court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, set a lower threshold for counterintelligence agents to obtain permission for secret surveillance of espionage suspects than was required for investigators in criminal cases.

To prevent criminal investigators from using the intelligence act to seek warrants, officials and courts gradually created a rule keeping the two spheres largely separate. It was known in the government as the wall.

Applications for criminal warrants must comply with the Fourth Amendment's proscriptions against intrusive searches and required an official declaration that there was "probable cause" to believe a crime had occurred. By contrast, the intelligence surveillance law required only a showing that there was probable cause that the subject was the agent of a foreign power.

Much of this little-known legal debate became public in November 2002 when a special federal appeals court ruled that the wall had been destroyed by the counterterrorism law called the USA Patriot Act, which was enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the court added a stunning observation, saying that even without the counterterrorism law, the wall had never been necessary and that courts and Justice Department officials had misinterpreted the law for more than 20 years.

"Effective counterintelligence, as we have learned, requires the wholehearted cooperation of all the government's personnel who can be brought to the task," the court wrote. "A standard which punishes such cooperation could well be thought dangerous to national security."

In his Tuesday testimony, Mr. Ashcroft pointedly blamed one of the commission members, Jamie S. Gorelick, for enacting the wall. Ms. Gorelick was the deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who signed regulations in 1995 enforcing the wall.

"In 1995, the Justice Department embraced flawed legal reasoning, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required," Mr. Ashcroft said, adding that the wall specifically impeded investigations into two of the terrorists who hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11.

Confusion over how to interpret the wall also figured in the dispute of why the F.B.I. refused the request of its agent Colleen Rowley to seek a court authorization to explore the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001 on immigration violations. Inspection of the computer would have disclosed information showing that Islamic extremists were taking flight lessons in the United States.

"Somebody built this wall," he said, citing Ms. Gorelick's 1995 secret memorandum.

"Although you understand the debilitating impacts of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum. So I have had it declassified for you and the public to review. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission," a reference to Ms. Gorelick.

The appeals court that demolished the wall said, however, that it had been erected earlier and was only codified by Ms. Gorelick.

The court also said that it was "quite puzzling that the Justice Department, at some point during the 1980's, began to read the statute as" requiring a separation of the two fields of counterintelligence and criminal search warrants.

In her questioning of Mr. Ashcroft, Ms. Gorelick did not refer to the issue of her 1995 memorandum. But Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, challenged Mr. Ashcroft, noting that the deputy attorney general under Mr. Ashcroft renewed the 1995 guidelines. Mr. Gorton said the Bush Justice Department ratified those guidelines, saying in its own secret memorandum on Aug. 6, 2001, that "the 1995 procedures remain in effect today."

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Not Me
"At the time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote Headquarters," said Ashcroft, "quote, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not -- the public will not understand why . . .'"

Who is the FBI investigator who wrote this?