bravo MH!

I believe that FDR described geting changes made at the war department was like punching a feather bed. Beat on it all day long and at the end it still looks the same.

That can be said of most federal (of state) departments. And the opportunity to make fundamental changes does not happen often.

The Commission does have the chance to make a real and positive contribution to our country. I think that is why many people get so upset as we watch it go off the rails.

Well, the Commission does have problems, as I mentioned. I think Kean’s comments the other day about Gorelick were pretty asinine and I’m worried that, not really being intelligence experts, the Commissioners might make a bunch of crackpot recommendations. But these things need to be seriously looked at and publicly debated. Their recommendations don’t have to be blindly accepted.

You should rely on more than Glenn Reynolds before you toss Gorelick off the commission. His post on her was a joke. Her supposed "conflict of interest" is nothing compared to Zelikow's.

As far as Ashcroft's "exposing" Gorelick as the author/builder of the much-ballyhoed "Wall," it is a perfect example of where the most objectionable partisanship has been coming from--the Bush Administration witnesses. Just another example of the Administration's policy of hoarding and witholding anything and everything possible, but readily declassifying irrelevant documents to embarrass opponents.

And don't forget the usual heavy dose of hypocracy with Ashcroft's bullshit, since his Deputy A.G. reaffirmed the exact same guidelines on Aug 6, 2001. Set aside the fact that the guidelines do not actually inhibit intelligence or establish any wall...Which sounds worse? A Deputy A.G. establishing some guidelines on information-sharing nine years ago or a Deputy A.G. reaffirming those guidelines in the midst of a high-threat period of significant activity? On August 6, 2001! That date just keeps coming up, huh?

Of course Ashcroft was just looking to finger somebody else and discredit Gorelick at the same time. If the guidelines were in fact an obstacle to his DOJ, and they were not, he really should have been looking at his own Deputy.

Reynolds then actually admits Gorelick's work in '95 was "wasn't necessarily a bad idea at the time" but then goes on to claim that anti-Bush partisans are the only ones engaging in hindsight, and unevenly at that. Yes, many can look back and wish the rules were different, but Ashcroft wants to look back and act like he was aware of the problems but paralyzed by the rules, both of which are clearly false. That is hidsight with a heavy layer of revisionist history on top.

I didn’t say Gorelick necessarily did anything wrong and have read a number of other sources besides just that one post on InstaPundit (and he’s had many others). She just shouldn’t be on the Commission.

The much-maligned “wall” – which I did not attack - between law enforcement and intelligence was set up for a reason. If you allow people to be prosecuted on the basis of information collected through spying, you are, in effect, circumventing the Bill of Rights. The “wall” was at least partially a reaction to Nixon era efforts to use the intelligence services for nefarious domestic purposes (although the FBI and CIA, admirably, both declined to get involved in Watergate). So, in that sense, the “breakdown” on 9/11 between the FBI and CIA not acting as one was really just a function of the system working as it was supposed to. It is something which needed, and still needs, to be corrected (the PATRIOT Act helps), but the “wall” was there for a good reason.

That said, Gorelick was involved in writing this memo and was apparently a key figure in the Justice Department during the 1990s. She is someone who could’ve easily been a witness here, which means she has a conflict and shouldn’t be on the Commission any more than should Richard Clarke or Condoleeza Rice or Robert Mueller or Janet Reno, etc… I believe that Ashcroft’s point, besides the obvious defensiveness, was that it is somewhat hypocritical for the Commission to attack his Justice Department for continuing policies enacted and expanded by sitting members of the Commission.

All fair points. Then again, Gorelick didn't pick herself, and it was perfectly obvious to everyone involved that she served as D.A.G. under Clinton. It probably should have disqualified her from the start. My problem is that Ashcroft's "revelation" has led to a call for Gorelick's resignation, when her authoring of the guidelines memo really isn't cause for exclusion as much as her actual job should have been. It seems being on a list of potential witnesses, as a Deputy A.G. could have been, should have been grounds to deny her appointment, and probably would have been prudent.

If her presence on the Commision is such a problem, she should never have been appointed. To lobby for her disqualification now because she has been pointed in her questioning or criticism smacks of greater partisan posturing than her actual appointment. I think, and it seems you agree, she has been fairly neutral and a harsh questioner of no matter who is in the witness chair.

I think the criticism of Ashcroft (and others in both Administrations) is warranted because they are using the "wall" as a boilerplate excuse for what is really failure of FBI culture more than procedure. Reno went into great detail about this the same day. There really is no legal "wall" in effect the way so many have claimed. It is just a convenient "straw man" excuse. The greatest failures seem to have been caused more by turf and territory issues than actual legal restrictions. The biggest example of this is the whole two hijackers on CIA watchlist/FBI didn't know they were in the country excuse. There is no reason under any FISA or other regulation why this information shouldn't have been shared or widely available, yet it is the loudest example of a "wall"-related excuse. This goes back to Clarke's shaking the trees point. That info might have made its way around under better or more urgent circumstances.

The blame seems pretty evenly distributed, its just that the Bush Administration isn't used to being questioned on its behavior or willing to admit they could possibly have made a mistake or even done better. That's my biggest problem. I've never seen a parade of officials show up and say "the buck should have stopped over there."

I agree, for the most part, with a lot of what you’re saying. The “wall” is just one of many factors and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Like Rice said, there’s no silver bullet here.

What always strikes me about 9/11 is how it is both a huge, complicated story and a very simple one. You could write a 1,000 page book about it and still not cover all the international and domestic events and causes leading to it. At the same time, it’s a tragically simple story of 19 dedicated, murderous fanatics from an implacably evil organization who manipulated our system and, capitalizing on surprise and their callous disregard for innocent life, were able to pull off the most destructive terrorist attack in U.S. history. Both versions always need to be considered.

One of the things I can remember thinking right from the beginning about 9/11 was how everyone was calling the attacks "sophisticated", "so complex they had to be state-sponsored", etc. I wasn't really seeing it.

The same descriptions are liberally applied to other al Queda attacks and the Spain bombings. The embassy bombings (or Spain) were impressive and sophisticated because they were simultaneous?!? Watches and alarm clocks are pretty easy to come by, and synchronizing them is hardly complex. The Cole attack? A rubber raft and explosives.

The 9/11 attack was certainly brazen, ruthless and effective, but was it really all that complex? When you break it all down, it really was plane tickets and boxcutters that could all have been easily purchased online with one credit card. The hardest part was assembling a team of maniacs ready and willing to die. That last part seems hardest to us, but apparently is not so unheard of in other parts of the world...

The common thread in all of these attacks is not sophistication or even the brutality, it is the element surprise coupled with the plan's simplicity.

Despite all the new security measures put in place, the surprise of deliberately crashing hijacked planes will likely never work again, simply because there will be a planeload of passengers on board expecting it.

For that reason, I fear al Queda has already abandoned that plan for a new one. Our countemeasures are likely to be worthless, because some other simple, overlooked weakness will be exploited next time.

From The Washington Post (via Atrios):

Mr. Ashcroft's Smear
Tuesday, April 20, 2004; Page A18

IN HIS TESTIMONY last week before the Sept. 11 commission, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft loosed a remarkable attack on Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member who served as deputy attorney general during part of the Clinton administration. The "single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem," Ashcroft said, "was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," and the "basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum" from 1995 -- which Mr. Ashcroft had conveniently declassified for the hearing. "Full disclosure," he said, "compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission" -- that is, Ms. Gorelick. Mr. Ashcroft's allegations, which triggered criticism and demands for her resignation from prominent Republicans, are grossly unfair.

When Ms. Gorelick was named to the commission, critics could have asked whether her Justice Department past should disqualify her from serving on a body that would, among other things, review aspects of her tenure. Yet few raised the concern then; it was understood that the commission would accept a measure of conflict, with Ms. Gorelick and other commissioners, in exchange for expertise. It's a bit late now to suggest that the trade was no good.

And blaming her for the "wall" is absurd in any event. The memo by Ms. Gorelick that Mr. Ashcroft branded as the culprit is not even mentioned in the history of impaired information-sharing that Mr. Ashcroft's department gave to the special court that finally lifted the barriers after Sept. 11, 2001. That court described the wall's origin as "sometime in the 1980s -- the exact moment is shrouded in historical mist." A set of procedures promulgated in 1995 codified the policy of keeping intelligence and law enforcement separate and significantly fortified the wall. But as the Justice Department's brief itself acknowledged, prosecutors knew long before those procedures were announced that they were not to direct intelligence activities or to use intelligence surveillance to develop criminal cases. And the Bush administration explicitly maintained the 1995 procedures before the Sept. 11 attacks. The wall was no individual's fault but a product of years of department practice, judicial opinions and supervision of intelligence surveillance by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

In fact, Ms. Gorelick was an advocate of increased collaboration between spies and cops, not greater separation. She pushed to give the court power to authorize physical searches as well as electronic monitoring, and surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act more than doubled during the Clinton administration. The department was criticized by civil libertarians and others on the left and right alike -- us included -- for the changes that she advanced. Should she have done more? Neither the political climate nor the courts would have tolerated a dismantling of the wall, which was seen as an essential protection against the civil liberties abuses of the Watergate era. Even after Sept. 11 and the passage of the USA Patriot Act -- a central purpose of which was to facilitate the sharing of information -- the FISA court unanimously reaffirmed key restrictions. It took high-level action by all three branches of government, including an unprecedented appeal to a special review court that had never previously convened, to finally clarify that the wall was a kind of legal myth that never had quite the force that both the department and the lower FISA court had imagined. Pretending that such a deep-seated institutional problem was Ms. Gorelick's single-handed creation should have been beneath the attorney general.

I'm not sure anything is below this Attorney General.

A couple of quick points related to both comments – I don’t want to tackle too much at once:

* Al Qaeda’s attacks are very complex and sophisticated by terrorist standards. Most terrorist groups are very primitive and fail early and often. By those twisted standards, al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks are the gold standards.

* I still think Gorelick’s conflict should have kept her off. If we wanted experts with first-hand experience during the period in question, the Commission could’ve been formed that way. Like most people, I never brought it up earlier because I didn’t know about it and wasn’t following the Commission too closely until it was on national TV. I don’t think it’s a huge deal though, as the original post here reflects.

* I’m not much of an Ashcroft fan myself and think he was, indeed, being too clever for his own good there. That said, I think Ashcroft is pretty low on the list of people to “blame” for 9/11, to the extent that is useful exercise for anyone.

FYI - here is a contrary view to that Post editorial, though I haven’t had a chance to read it all yet:

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200404210840.asp