Able Danger: Gorelick Smear Unjustified
The right-wing blogosphere has launched a coordinated assault on former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick as part of a larger effort to blame the Clinton administration for 9/11. Think Progress sets the record straight and explains why the smear is a lie.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer claims a “highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.” Shaffer says those efforts were blocked by military lawyers.
....Shaffer’s story, if it’s true, involved communications between the Department of Defense and the FBI. Gorelick’s 1995 memo was only about communications between the FBI and the criminal division of the Justice Department. (It also didn’t create a wall between the FBI and the Justice Department but that’s another story.) Whatever problems Shaffer had trying to communicate with the FBI it had absolutely nothing to do with Gorelick.
Gorelick's memo is here. She explained herself in the Washington Post which I wrote about here, where I also explain why the "the wall" often is a good thing.
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