Conflicting whitewash?

Jamie Gorelick has been asked to resign over a clear conflict of interest?

Glenn Reynolds points out,

she shouldn't have been on the Commission at all. She should resign now, but she won't.
Unfortunately, this is not new.

Glenn Reynolds noted this conflict of interest as early as August. Shortly thereafter, he noted it was worse than previously thought (although he also linked to her defenders). I chimed in, noting her "long and sleazy background in political intrigue, skullduggery, and (of course) being a coverup artist."

Hey that was eight months ago!

And now it's news?

Here's some old background on Gorelick (I apologize that this is taken from what seems to be a conspiracy site, but the Gorelick background appears historically correct):

Considered one of the fifty most powerful women in the country, CFR member Jamie Gorelick is currently vice-chair of the giant mortgage lender and insurer Fannie Mae. From March 1994 until she joined Fannie Mae in May 1997 she was Deputy Attorney General, the number two spot in Janet Renos Department of Justice.

In May 1995, the Intelligence Community Law Enforcement Policy Board was established to meet quarterly and discuss mutual concerns of the Attorney General and Director of Central Intelligence. The board was co-chaired by Gorelick and DCI George Tenet. Other members included all of the law enforcement agencies, the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research and the Defense Department General Counsel.

This is the same time frame (spring of 1995) in which the Philippine government apprised the FBI, CIA and State Department of Project Bojinka an Islamic terrorist plot which included hijacking commercial airlines planes and flying them into the Pentagon, World Trade Center towers and, several other buildings.

....In 1998, while at Fannie Mae, Gorelick served on Clintons Central Intelligence National Security Advisory Panel as well as the President's Review of Intelligence.

Bojinka! Hardly a conspiracy site claim; here's a CNN report!
a [1995] plan to recruit pilots to hijack US jetliners in the continental United States and slam the planes into government and commercial buildings.
Now there's something we don't hear about much today...... Might the Bojinka connection with Ramzi Youssef, Iraq, and Oklahoma City be a little, um, embarrassing? (And not to Bush or Ashcroft, either.....)

Claims of whitewash by professional whitewashers are getting harder and harder to bear.

Gorelick merits an investigation herself.

(I guess that should be after the resignation which isn't going to happen.)

UPDATE: I failed to note that among the clients of Gorelick's firm is Saudi Prince Mohammed al Faisal. And I'll bet I failed to notice a lot more than that!

Oh, and of course even Richard Clarke made note in his book of the above Ramzi Youssef-Iraq 1995 connection. (Via Glenn Reynolds, who commented that "the domestic political implications are dramatic." I'll say.....)

NICE UPDATE: While I haven't found anything especially nice to say about Ms. Gorelick (who I'm sure possesses a brilliant mind), I will nonetheless refrain from saying anything mean.

Hmmmmm...... She "called the shots" in the McVeigh trial, appointing the guy who prosecuted McVeigh. And she knew enough about the Bojinka material in Ramzi Youssef's computer to cite the case in support of encryption restrictions. Fighting evil is nice, right?

According to this web site, she thinks that "Email flames" and "faceless" chat rooms are "threats to family values." That's um, nice. Kind of.

It wouldn't be nice to accuse her of working with Richard Clarke to cover up terrorism, though. So I won't do that. Honestly, though! That WorldNetDaily can be so mean!

FAST AND LOOSE UPDATE: In matters of integrity, Jamie Gorelick knows how to cut through red tape:

In 1996 Bill Clinton told reporters he was "not told about the June 1996 FBI warnings of Communist Chinese involvement in the 1996 presidential election." However, it was later learned that president Clinton not only KNEW about it, but that he subsequently made a thwarted attempt to obtain the counterintelligence information about what the FBI had learned of the Communist Chinese influence on the presidential election in November of 1996. Charles Ruff, Clinton legal counsel who most recently defended him in the Senate Impeachment trial, made the FBI contact. Ruff contacted Janet Reno's deputy Jamie Gorelick and wanted to know what federal investigators knew or suspected about Chinese illegal contributions to the presidential campaign. However, when FBI director Freeh learned of the White House probe by Gorelick, he ordered the information not be provided to Clinton, federal law enforcement officials told the Daily Republican in 1997. In a New York Times story Ruff was quoted as telling Gorelick he was seeking the information on behalf of the National Security Council.... However, law enforcement officials pointed out that Ruff's request was received only after FBI director Freeh had left Washington on a trip to the Middle East. In his absence, attorney general Janet Reno and Gorelick quickly moved to obtain the secret FBI files. Before the Justice Department turned over the FBI files to Clinton's legal counsel, Robert Bryant, then head of the FBI national security division, picked up the telephone and informed Freeh of Clinton's probe for the secret files on the Chinese investigation. Freeh ordered the files withheld. [bold in original]
That wasn't very nice of Louis Freeh, was it?

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds weighs in on the allegation that Gorelick helped set policies which hindered the CIA's hunt for bin Laden. His conclusion is that Gorelick is on the wrong side of the table:

she should be a witness, not a Commissioner, on a number of important issues.
I'll say....

FINAL UPDATE: In a twist that would please Lewis Carroll, Gorelick now sits in judgment of Ashcroft for not tearing down her wall!

The Ashcroft Justice Department failed to dismantle the wall prior to the 9/11 attacks. Yes, that's true. And it was dumb, which was why Ashcroft got grilled over it by Gorelick's fellow commissioners. But Gorelick's argument actually makes my point. If it was relevant, probative and highly material for the commission to probe why Ashcroft did not eradicate the wall when he had the chance in the months before 9/11, it is doubly relevant, probative, and highly material to probe why on earth Gorelick erected the wall in the first place. (From Juan Non-Volokh via Glenn Reynolds.)
In other words, "How dare you not undo what I did!" How ridiculous is this going to get?

posted by Eric on 04.14.04 at 02:10 PM





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