Gorelick again...

Some people have questioned my parody of Gorelick. Here’s one email:

1. What wall? It was more like a gate.

2. Whatever legal restrictions there were, are now mitigated substantially by the Patriot Act.
Saying that Gorelick's memo "crated" a wall between intelligence and law enforcement information sharing, is like saying a company attorney "created" all the federals laws his company must comply with, when he drafts a memo advising his company how to comply.

This is a classic example of knowledgeable and intelligent party hacks (who know this is a pile of horseshit) duping a bunch of unsophisticated, dumbasses (i.e. YOU) into parroting propaganda that makes absolutely no sense.

Even your "tear down that wall" slogan is moronic because a) there never was a wall to begin with b) Jamie Gorelick didn't erect it, even if there was one, and c) to the extent there ever was a wall, it's now GONE.

Better arguments please.

Here's what the Gorelick document actually says:

Because the counterintelligence investigation will involve the use of surveillance techniques authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) against targets that, in some instances, had been subject to surveillance under Title III, and because it will involve some of the same sources and targets as the criminal investigation, we believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply to a criminal investigation.

part 5 of the detailed section below creates a new rule:

"All foreign counterintelligence relating to future terrorist activities will be in classified reports which will be provided to OIPR, but will not be provided either to the criminal agents, the USAO, or the Criminal Division without FBI and OIPR concurrence."

This was a significant addition to the already stringent FISA rules in place. A huge bureaucratic logjam as I understand it.

As Ethan Wallison has said: "The activities of the 9/11 commission remind us that official Washington can be sorted by degrees of culpability." The main point of my parody was that Gorelick should not be on the panel, because she was a participant in the whole D.C. logjam.

It's a bid absurd that Gorelick was asking questions of Reno, her boss?! Or am I missing something here.

Granted, FISa restrictions were not the making of the Clinton administration, but after the 1993 WTC bombing and the subsequent lucky foiling of other attacks it should have realized that the reigns were too tight.

As the 2002 FISA court of review concluded:

"[T]he 1995 Procedures limited contacts between the FBI and [DOJ's] Criminal Division in cases where FISA surveillance or searches were being conducted by the FBI for foreign intelligence (FI) or foreign counterintelligence (FCI) purposes"

The review goes on:

...they [the FISA rules] eventually came to be narrowly interpreted within the Department of Justice, and most particularly by [the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy Review (OIPR)], as requiring OIPR to act as a "wall" to prevent the FBI intelligence officials from communicating with the Criminal Division regarding ongoing FI or FCI investigations. . . . Thus, the focus became the nature of the underlying investigation, rather than the general purpose of the surveillance. Once prosecution of the target was being considered, the procedures, as interpreted by OIPR in light of the case law, prevented the Criminal Division from providing any meaningful advice to the FBI.

Gorelick herself refers to the FISA changes of 1995 (she puts most of the blame on the Bush and Reagan administration). There’s plenty of blame to go around... but in conclusion, the FISA interpretations were a major part of the problem.

And yes... thank God for the Patriot Act.