Putting The Fox In Charge Of The Henhouse

As if we don't have enough to worry about, reports coming out of Washington DC indicate that Jamie Gorelick (shown on the left, appropriately) is on the President's A List to be the next head of the FBI. Gorelick played a major role in keeping federal intelligence agencies from sharing information on terrorist activity prior to 9-11. At the 9-11 Commission hearings, she was unable to find any flaws in her career with the Clinton Justice Department's handling of potential terrorist attacks.

Gorelick's handling of interdepartmental/interagency cooperation on terrorist intelligence has become known as Gorelick's Wall. There is a strong belief among terrorism experts that Gorelick's Wall played a major role in allowing the 9-11 World Trade Center attack to proceed for lack of coordinated counter-terrorism efforts. She set strict "no contact" rules for the agencies investigating and following up on the 1993 World Trade Center attack. She also strictly interpreted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in place at the time to prevent intelligence officers from sharing information with the law enforcement agencies attempting to prosecute the Trade Center conspirators.

Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft testified at the 9-11 hearings that: "In 1995 the Justice Department, imposed a series of restrictions on the FBI that went well beyond what the law required. The single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents. Government erected this wall, government buttressed this wall, and before September 11, government was blinded by this wall." Later, and not under oath, Gorelick responded in an op-ed in the Washington Post. She proclaimed: "I did not invent the wall, which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute and federal court decisions interpreting it."

True enough, Ms. Gorelick, as far as it goes. But Ashcroft did not accuse Gorelick of inventing the wall (he specifically said "government erected it"). Ashcroft clearly said that Gorelick didn't disobey the law--she tortured it. But in fairness to Gorelick and the Clinton Justice Department, Ashcroft didn't do anything much himself to make the wall more transparent during his tenure prior to 9-11. Nevertheless, Ashcroft has re-examined his lack of action prior to 9-11 and has found his agenda wanting. Gorelick, on the other hand, has continued to be entirely convinced she did everything exactly as she should have.

After setting up rigid rules preventing intelligence and criminal prosecution agencies from sharing information on terrorist activities in 1994 and 1995, Gorelick left the Justice Department in 1977 to become the "go-to guy" for Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae. That's understandable. She didn't make $26 million in salary, bonuses and stock options at the Justice Department the way she did at Fannie Mae. In league with Raines and Congressman Barney Frank, she helped to create the machinery for subprime loans and government purchases of Fannie Mae bad debt which resulted in the economic crash which was the economic equivalent of the 9-11 attack. She learned her banking skills during her tenure as the Clinton budget director before moving over to Fannie Mae.

Intelligence incompetence and economic disaster-enabling deserve great reward. And the Wall Street Journal, among others, has reported that the post of FBI Director might very well be that reward. Talk about terror. The concept of an Eric Holder Justice Department working hand-in-glove and head-in-sand with a Jamie Gorelick FBI terrifies me.