Giuliani lies about the "wall" returning if Patriot Act not renewed

[flpoljunkie]

Shame on the New York Times for letting Giuliani lie with impugnity about the "wall" when they absolutely know better!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/opinion/17giuliani.html

Given these improvements, there is simply no compelling argument for going backward in the fight against terrorism. Perhaps a reminder is in order. The bipartisan 9/11 commission described a vivid example of how the old ways hurt us. In the summer of 2001, an F.B.I. agent investigating two individuals we now know were hijackers on Sept. 11 asked to share information with another team of agents. This request was refused because of the wall. The agent's response was tragically prescient: "Someday, someone will die - and wall or not - the public will not understand why we were not more effective."

How quickly we forget.

(Let John Dean explain it to you, Rudi.)

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040507.html

Commission Member Jamie Gorelick's Response

Writing in The Washington Post, Jamie Gorelick has effectively demolished Ashcroft's (and his troops') contentions. In her brief essay, she showed that Ashcroft's claim that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11" was the wall built by her was "simply not true."

First, she pointed out she had not invented the "wall" and that this alleged wall was merely a set of Department procedures to implement the 1978 statute known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and federal court decisions interpreting it. The law itself dictated that electronic surveillance in the United States could be authorized under a more lenient standard than typical criminal cases only if the "primary purpose" was to gather foreign intelligence, rather than to further a criminal investigation.

Second, Gorelick explained that the so-called wall was actually the result of the interpretations of FISA by the Justice Departments during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Plainly, it was no Democratic invention -- let alone one by Gorelick herself.

Third, she noted that Ashcroft's own Deputy Attorney General had "formally reaffirmed the 1995 guidelines in an Aug. 6, 2001 memo."

Fourth, Gorelick said the March 1995 memo she had written actually permitted "freer coordination between intelligence and criminal investigators" than in the standard finally adopted by Attorney General Janet Reno in July 1995, and by Ashcroft's department in August 2001.

Fifth, in fact, there was no wall in the guidelines. Rather, as Gorelick pointed out, nothing "prevented the sharing of information between criminal and intelligence investigators." Instead the guidelines set forth procedures to be followed, procedures that had been reaffirmed by Ashcroft's own Department of Justice later.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Hey Guliani you moron, hows this for another brick in the

wall.... what's the matter with you boy, don't you read????


http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wtc_agents.htm


Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11
by Greg Palast and David Pallister

FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.

US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.

FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they were linked.

[0007]

2. I know Guliani's best friend can read. I once saw Bernard Kerik

lips move when reading.

[ComerPerro]

3. LOL. I forgot about that idiot.

[cantstandbush]

4. We need a Dem to give a "rapid response" to Guliani TODAY!!

The Dem must come out swinging and say enough outrageous things to make the MSM prime time news. Set the record straight and start by saying that "Guiliani is taking part in the Bush administration's tactic of lying, misinforming, placing blame for 9/11 where it does not belong. By doing so, the administration and their supporters continue to deny their own responsibility and culpabilty for 9/11 and the events since then and continue to rip our Constitution to shreds in the name of ungodly, unjust, illegal, and shamefully economically dibilitating invasion and occupation of a nation under the guise of fighting an unsustainable war on terrorism."

[Igel]

5. A post that takes issue with a tangent to imply that the main point

was demolished.

Gorelick lists reasons for her not being responsible for the wall, and why the wall was merely guidelines derived from FISA. The fifth point is slippery: Nothing forbidded sharing intelligence, but then again, frequently you can only do what's allowed--and it wasn't explicitly allowed, there were no mechanisms for it. Hence the claim about Able Danger: avoid possible problems and opportunities for lawsuits.

The desired inference: No wall ever existed. But the existence of each of Gorelick's point presupposes that there was something preventing data-sharing that others dubbed a 'wall'. Much of the quibbling at the time was whether or not the hurdles to data-sharing were higher than legally required. Yes, was the consensus: Even Gorelick's affirmation and continuation of the older policies (and, if I'm not mistaken, to increasing them slightly, but that's a quibble) made them higher than required. But "higher than required" does not mean "simply as high as required" isn't itself too high. Therein lies the rub, and that is what needs to be rebutted. But I've heard no such rebuttal, just claims from people that don't have any more expertise than I do.

There might be a rebuttal to Giuliani: That the regulations have been changed, that FISA does not even impose any significant hurdles to the kinds of data-sharing that's needed, that it wasn't the Patriot Act that changed things and, therefore, the lapsing of the PA won't result in a reversion to the former guidelines and legal strictures.

Gorelick's prose isn't what's needed here: it's a personal defence, a "it's not my fault" statement.