Michelle Malkin has an excellent round-up of commentary on the Able Danger story, which is slowly gathering itself into a major scandal—one that could, conceivably, circle back to Sandy Berger’s trousers, Iraqi spies, Mohammed Atta’s infamous Prague non-meeting, and Jamie Gorelick’s paranoid anti-authoritarian authoritarianism (which took the form of an ill-advised “wall” that hamstrung our intelligence agencies by preventing them from cooperating with one another).
And speaking of Gorelick, here’s the New York Post’s Deborah Orin, “Commission Cover-up?”
Commission staffers at first denied knowing about the elite military unit known as Able Danger, but later admitted they were briefed  twice  and Atta was specifically named. Still, it was conveniently left out of the 9/11 report.
It gets worse. Gorelick’s defenders might argue that hindsight is 20-20. But that excuse doesn’t work in this case, because she was warned way back then  when the see-no-evil wall was created.
That warning came right from the front line in the War on Terror  from Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who headed up key terror probes like the prosecutions for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
White  herself a Clinton appointee  wrote directly to Reno that the wall was a big mistake.
“It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney’s Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required,” White wrote on June 13, 1995.
“The most effective way to combat terrorism is with as few labels and walls as possible so that wherever permissible, the right and left hands are communicating.”
That memo surfaced during the 9/11 hearings. But The Post has learned that White was so upset that she bitterly protested with another memo  a scathing one  after Reno and Gorelick refused to tear down the wall.
With eerie foresight, White warned that the Reno-Gorelick wall hindered law enforcement and could cost lives, according to sources familiar with the memo  which is still secret.
The 9/11 Commission got that White memo, The Post was told  but omitted any mention of it from its much-publicized report. Nor does the report include the transcript of its staff interview with White.
(h/t Powerline)
For a nice, comprehesive analysis, see Captain Ed, who links to his series of posts here. My previous post on Able Danger here. And here’s NRO’s Andrew McCarthy:
The wall generally forbidding intelligence agents from communicating with their criminal counterparts was a suicidally excessive way to ensure that what little information intelligence agents were permitted to pass would be admissible in court. This is the product of a mindset that insists, beyond all reason and common sense, that terrorism is just a law-enforcement problem.
Thank goodness for PATRIOT Act America, is all I can say…
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Yeah, Jeff, this is turning the 9/11 Commission into worse than the joke some of us thought it was–not just political, but corrupt.
Seems to have found facts that didn’t fit their conclusions, so they omitted the uncomfortable facts, rather than reassess their ill-founded conclusions.
The Commissions FIRST response was to lie.
Perhaps treasonous?
Okay, so we probably won’t ever charge Gorellick or Reno with anything, and Republican congressional hearings about the Wall and Able Danger are going to get called a witch hunt no matter what, so can we at least scowl at them harshly on the aniversary of 9/11?
I have a great Cox and Forkum cartoon idea. Charicatures of Gorellick, Reno, and Clinton, as see no evil, hear no evil, and do no evil; their hands respectively over their eyes, ears, and crotch.
Thanks a lot Democrats! Can’t freaking wait till you get another chance to wreck our country.
“Thank goodness for the Patriot Act America”
that’s all I can say too!
Jamie, do you think you’ll drop the bomb?
Jamie, do you think they’ll like your song?
Jamie, do you think they’ll try to break your balls?
Jamie, should you have built the wall?
Jamie, should you blame the President?
Jamie, should you trust the government?
Jamie, will they put you in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?
With no apologies to Roger Waters
Jamie, do you think you’ll drop the bomb?
Jamie, do you think they’ll like your song?
Jamie, do you think they’ll try to break your balls?
Jamie, should you have built the wall?
Jamie, should you blame the President?
Jamie, should you trust the government?
Jamie, will they put you in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?
With no apologies to Roger Waters
Gorelick, Reno, Mary Jo White… See what happens when you put so many women in charge of national security?
KIDDING! KIDDING!
TW: bring, as in, “me my turkey pot pie!”
Don’t you find it a little strange that just as the real patriots are on the verge of taking down KKKarl Rove for endangering the lives of every man, woman, and child (and since I don’t want to come off as some sort of heteronormative bigot, the good folks in the transgendered community, as well) in America by viciously and deliberately outing supersecretspy Valerie Plame, all of this “Able Danger” hocus-pocus comes out of the woodwork to whip the wingnuts into a frenzy?
And isn’t it conveeeeenient that this has dropped just as the Sainted Cindy Sheehan is about to bring the whole Bu$hCo neocon cabal to their knees with her heroically death-defying dissent?
I QUESTION THE TIMING!!!
Let’s not forget the real reason for the “wall” was to inhibit investigations into the horseshit Gorelick and Reno’s boss was up to.