"Lookout" <
mrloo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:rtsnq7dfgqg6eug4e...@4ax.com...
Clinton Admin. Knew of 9/11 Hijackers
Posted on Tuesday, August 09, 2005 2:50:47 PM by
More than a year before the 9/11 attacks, Clinton administration
intelligence officials had identified four of the 19 9/11 hijackers as a
terrorist threat - including al-Qaida team leader Mohamed Atta and his
partner Marwan al-Shehhi, whose planes destroyed the World Trade Center and
killed over 2,700 people.
But the critical information was not acted on, at least in part, because of
prohibitions against intelligence sharing implemented by former Deputy
Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who was reportedly installed in her post at
the insistence of then-first lady Hillary Clinton.
In the summer of 2000, a military team, known as Able Danger, had prepared a
chart that included visa photographs of Atta and al Shehhi and recommended
to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Rep. Curt Weldon and a former
intelligence official told the New York Times.
"We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them," the
former intelligence official said.
However, the recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared,
in part, said the Times, because the four suspects had entered the United
States on valid entry visas.
But Rep. Weldon and the unnamed intelligence official also cited what the
paper described as "a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about
sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency."
In fact, such intelligence sharing was strictly prohibited under Ms.
Gorelick's policy, known at the Justice Department as "The Wall," which, in
the spring of 2000, had also prevented the CIA from tipping off the FBI that
two additional 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, had
entered the country.
Al-Midhar and al-Hamzi were identified by the Able Danger team as well, the
Times said.
In its final report, however, the 9/11 Commission made no mention of the
fact that the Clinton administration had identified key members of the
hijack team, even though, the Times noted, that information had been shared
with 9/11 Commission members.
The account by Weldon and the Times intelligence source is the first
assertion that Atta and al Shehhi - who caused the most destruction in the
worst attack ever suffered on U.S. soil - had been identified by the Clinton
administration.
In testimony before the 9/11 Commission last year, then-Attorney General
John Ashcroft blasted Gorelick's "Wall," saying, "The single greatest
structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal
investigators and intelligence agents"
"[Ms. Gorelick] built that wall," said Ashcroft, "through a March 1995
memo."
The Gorelick memo stipulated, in part:
"We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will
more 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 [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] is
being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal
investigation."
Ms. Gorelick is expected to be a leading candidate for attorney general
should Mrs. Clinton win the 2008 presidential election.
1 posted on Tuesday, August 09, 2005 2:50:49 PM by areafiftyone
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It'll still be Bush's fault. Even if Gore had won the election in 2000, it
would still be Bush's fault.........