CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, April 19, 2004

Found: the 9/11 smoking information firewall

If you have watched any of the hearings being conducted by the 9/11 Commission, it is apparent certain commission members (notably, Richard Ben-Veniste, Robert Kerrey and Jamie Gorelick) are hell bent for election, to find a “smoking gun” that would place the blame for the 9/11 tragedy on the Bush Administration.

Thus far, the most startling revelation of the 9/11 Commission came during the testimony of Attorney General, John Ashcroft, when he declassified a memorandum written by (are you ready for this?) 9/11 Commission member, Jamie Gorelick, when she was deputy attorney general under Janet Reno.

Ms. Gorelick’s memo is prima facie evidence that the smoking gun of 9/11 is actually a smoking information exchange firewall -- a firewall erected at the behest of civil libertarians and champions of political correctness. The practical effect of Ms. Gorelick’s directive was to prevent the FBI from connecting the dots that would most likely have led to the roll up of the 9/11 plot before it ever left the ground.

So, when National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, testified “there was no silver bullet” that would have unraveled the 9/11 plot, she was wrong. Back in the Clinton years, there was a “silver bullet” – the Jamie Gorelick memo.

Here’s the fact situation: Months before the 9/11 attacks, FBI agents arrested French citizen, Zacarius Moussaoui, on an immigration violation charge. As such, that was a criminal matter. In the possession of Moussaoui was a laptop computer which, too late, was found to contain a list of the soon-to-be 9/11 aircraft hijackers and the various flight schools where they were being trained to attack the World Trade Center and other key targets. The data on that computer turned out to be the “smoking gun” and the “silver bullet” all rolled into one.

Concurrently, over on the counterintelligence side of the FBI house, reports were coming in about young Arab males taking flight training in Arizona, Oklahoma and Florida. Logic would suggest that all the FBI had to do was connect the dots between information being collected by FBI counterintelligence investigators and Moussaoui’s computer. That would have almost completely spilled the beans on the 9/11 plot.

But the dots never were connected because the Gorelick memo said that the criminal investigation side of the FBI was not allowed to share information with the counterintelligence side of the FBI.

Dick Morris (Bill Clinton’s former senior political adviser) says, “Of all the public officials in the Clinton Administration, the one who is most directly, in my judgment, responsible for 9/11 happening is Jamie Gorelick… It was Gorelick’s invention to set up this wall that separated investigators from intelligence gatherers…”Jamie Gorelick is more responsible than anybody for the 9/11 plot going undetected.”

A frustrated FBI agent wrote to FBI headquarters warning that “someone would die because of these policies.” Unfortunately, the agent was correct. Almost 3,000 innocent people died because the Gorelick directive -- adhering to the politically-correct policies of Attorney General, Janet Reno -- kept the dots from being connected.

So far, Ms. Gorelick has only felt enough discomfort to recuse herself when discussions of her infamous memo are before the 9/11 Panel. But Ms. Gorelick will have a hand in the writing of the panel’s final report. As the author of “smoking firewall” that prevented the essential dots from being connected, her objectivity, and thus, the panel’s final report must be called into question.

Bear in mind, Ms. Gorelick, who contributed $13,250 to Democrat candidates over the last 16 months, makes no secret of her desire to be John Kerry’s attorney general. By staying on the 9/11 Commission (despite calls for her resignation) she hopes to protect her political backside, pin 9/11 on the Bush Administration, help elect John Kerry and be rewarded with the post of Attorney General of the United States. Clearly, the fox (vixen) is guarding the hen house.

William Hamilton, a nationally syndicated columnist and featured commentator for USA Today, is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – novels about terrorist attacks on Colorado’s water supply and on the Panama Canal, respectively.

©2004. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com