I Told You So

Yes, I did. I told you so.

I said, as far back as this post in April of 2004, that the 9/11 Commission report would be compromised by politics. Why? Because of conflict of interest. It's simple, really.

As far as I'm concerned, one of the most serious issues that the Commission needed to investigate as to why the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies were not able to stop the attack by sharing information and cooperating with each other was "the wall". The wall was a Justice Department policy disallowing cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement.

So, as it's being revealed this week in the press, when the military task force named Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a probable terrorist in 2000 and indeed identified Al Qaida cells in the U.S., they were prohibited from sharing that with the law enforcement groups that could have stopped them. Why? The wall.

This was not dealt with in the 9/11 Commission report, which indicates that the report is faulty.

Sadly, this was entirely predictable - and was, in fact, predicted in this blog and others.

Why?

- because the author of the "wall" policy was a Clinton Justice official named Jamie Gorelick, who worked for Janet Reno
- because Jamie Gorelick should have testified before the Commission, but did not
- because Jamie Gorelick was herself a Commission member - in a position to tamper with and hide this testimony
- because when the Commission chairman and co-chairman were confronted with this conflict of interest, while the Commission was in session, they circled the wagons and protected their sitting member - with the result that the investigation of the "wall" policy was handled with kid gloves and political sensibilities instead of aggressive investigation. Go back and read it in the report. It's entirely inaccurate and dangerous because it's a coverup that prevented real action to address the deficiencies of the Clinton policy.

Someone, or several someones, need to fired retroactively. Let's start with both chairmen of the Commission - who have rendered their report inoperative by shielding one of their own and denying the country the truth for which we paid.

Let's also call Commissioner Gorelick into the dock to testify, finally.