I hate it when I have to repeat myself but here we go again.

9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, about whose conflict of interest I've complained for years, is once again being criticized -- by others who had also warned about her conflict of interest.

The real story here folks is that when "Able Danger" passed the information about Atta and al-Shehhi to the FBI in 2000, with a recommendation to shut the cell down, the Defense Department and FBI turned them down.

Why?

Because of the infamous "Gorelick Wall", which prevented the sharing of information between the intelligence and law enforcement communities. In case you forgot, Jamie Gorelick was the former Clinton Administration official who devised and wrote the policy, and also served on the 9/11 commission.

Because Atta and al-Shehhi had green cards, they were considered "US persons" and were free to operate behind Gorelick's wall. Not surprising The New York Times makes no mention of Gorelick in describing this policy in its story on "Able Danger".

It is exactly this type of mentality that led us to post in April, 2004, that Gorelick would have been a perfect VP for John "Crushed" Kerry. We also produced a video when we were crushkerry.com about her, which hopefully Pat can find and put up on the site later.

There will be much made in the coming weeks about the 9/11 Commission staff purposely ignoring the "Able Danger" information to protect the Clinton Administration or Jamie Gorelick.

The 9/11 Commission spokesman's official explanation is looking incredibly lame:

There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had.

I'm especially wondering whether this will lead back to that other stuff about Atta. Like the "discredited" story that William Safire was talking about.

No way?

Or other stuff described as previously discredited:

NEW intelligence reports suggesting that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta arrived in the US in late 1999 or early 2000 - six months earlier than previously thought - are likely to spark a reassessment of public servant Johnelle Bryant's incredible story of a face-to-face meeting with the terrorist.

In an extraordinary 2002 interview later branded a hoax by some media -- including the ABC's Media Watch -- Ms Bryant claimed to have met Atta in late April or early May of 2000 when she worked as a loan officer with the US Department of Agriculture's farm services agency in Florida.

Redstate.org speculates about whether there's an Iraqi elephant in the corner:

The elephant in the corner of the 9-11 Commission’s report has always been the perfunctory way in which they dismiss the allegation that Atta met with the intelligence chief at Iraq’s Prague embassy, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, on April 8-9, 2001. This meeting was discounted on the strength of Atta’s cell phone being used on April 6, 9, 10, and 11 and an ATM photo on April 11… and the fact that they can’t find a record that Atta bought plane tickets with presumably any of the 63 drivers licenses the hijackers possessed.

The Prague story would not fit the preconception that the operation was carried out strictly by al-Qaeda without assistance of any other government. The dismissal of the Able Danger information is inexplicable without assuming that the Commission had decided in advance who was to blame.

I think "MAKES YOU WONDER WHAT ELSE THEY TOSSED OUT" is a kind way of putting it, and I'm inclined to agree with the conclusions of Mark Steyn:

Maybe we need a September 11 Commission Commission to investigate the September 11 Commission. A body intended to reassure Americans that the lessons of that terrible day had been learned instead engaged in at best transparent politicking and collusion in posterior-covering and at worst something a much darker and more disturbing.

The problem pre-September 11 was always political -- that's to say, no matter how savvy individual operatives in various agencies may have been, the political culture then meant nothing would happen except a memo would get typed and shoved into a filing cabinet. Together with other never fully explained episodes -- like Sandy Berger's pants-stuffing at the national archives -- the Able Danger story makes one thing plain: The problem is still political.

No way!