I had planned to discuss today’s New York Times article detailing how—according to a former defense official and Republican Congressman Curt Wheldon—military intelligence had already identified the core of the Atta Al Qaeda cell (though not Atta himself) by the summer of 2000.  Fortunately, Captain Ed has already done the heavy lifting for me:

The reason for the inability to share information with the FBI, information that might have led them to “connect the dots”, in the parlance of the 9/11 Commission, was the wall between intelligence and law-enforcement operations constructed in large part by the Clinton Administration. While FISA, the legislation governing the use of law-enforcement resources for intelligence work, has existed since the 1970s, the 1990s saw a major reinterpretation of that law within the executive branch, prompted by Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick. As Andrew McCarthy noted last year, that reinterpretation had the practical effect of cutting off all communication between the two groups responsible for American security[…]

From this reading of events, Ed asks if maybe the 911 Commission itself wasn’t irrevocably tainted from the outset (a position I likewise argued at the time—albeit rather obliquely):

[…] Could it be that the Commission didn’t want to provide any further embarrassment to one of its members—the same Jamie S. Gorelick whose actions created the obstacles that kept military intelligence from coordinating with the FBI? It would have made crystal clear the damage done to the national-security effort through the hostility of the Clinton Administration towards intelligence efforts. It also would have shown the foolishness of including Gorelick on the 9/11 Commission, an objection made by CQ during the hearings last year, and for the same reasons.

This new information undermines the notion that the 9/11 Commission report provides a comprehensive look at the attacks. It considered the primary reason for the attacks’ success as an intelligence failure, while this shows that at least one intelligence agency had it right. It found itself handcuffed by a political policy that forbade them from doing anything constructive with the intelligence they had.

We’d do well to please remember this the next time the cry goes out for yet another round of politicized hearings that supporters claim will help us get to the bottom of things (which they no doubt will, provided the “bottom of things” is consistent with the suspicions that launched the investigation in the first place.  Otherwise, all bets are off…).

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