More Gorelickgate Nonsense

That "Gorelickgate" is a pretend scandal being hyped by the Right, purely so that they can blame the Clinton administration for 9/11 and everything that followed from it, is now obvious.

Let's start with today's Media Metters For America column. It's long and excellent and I recommend reading the whole thing:

if Able Danger did in fact identify Atta, the Gorelick memo and the subsequent 1995 Clinton administration guidelines based on it did not prevent the group from sharing that information with intelligence agencies or law enforcement officials. As former Attorney General John Ashcroft noted in his testimony before the 9-11 Commission, the Gorelick memo provided the "basic architecture" for the 1995 guidelines established by then-Attorney General Janet Reno that formalized rules for intelligence sharing that were already in place. But, as the 1995 guidelines clearly state, the Gorelick memo and the guidelines applied only to intelligence sharing "between the FBI and the Criminal Division" within the Justice Department, not a military unit established by the Defense Department.

For those hard of understanding, the former Head of Homeland Security and a staunch Bush supporter says it's nonsense.

Or if you would prefer it from former Republican Senator and Commission member Slade Gorton?

the assertion that the commission failed to report on this program to protect Ms. Gorelick is ridiculous. She had nothing to do with any "wall" between law enforcement and our intelligence agencies. The 1995 Department of Justice guidelines at issue were internal to the Justice Department and were not even sent to any other agency. The guidelines had no effect on the Department of Defense and certainly did not prohibit it from communicating with the FBI, the CIA or anyone else.

Or how about Rightwing blogging doyen John Hinderaker ?

Gorelick's memo is limited in scope; it limits the prosecutors' ability to get information from the FBI's counterintelligence division. It would not have covered the situation at issue in Able Danger, that is, information gathered by military intelligence.

Got it yet?

If you haven't then consider the parallel between "Gorelickgate" and the infamous Newsweek abuse scandal which was so scorned by conservative bloggers for relying on "maybe I remember" sources. The Washington Post has this today:

The former intelligence officer who says that a Defense Department program identified Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said yesterday that many of his allegations are not based on his memory but on the recollections of others.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who has been on paid administrative leave from the Defense Intelligence Agency since his security clearance was suspended in March 2004, said in a telephone interview that a Navy officer and a civilian official affiliated with the Able Danger program told him after the attacks that Atta and other hijackers had been included on a chart more than a year earlier.

I mean, c'mon! Hearsay and possible memories do not a scandal make - or at least that was the Right's stance over Newsweek, remember? The simplest explanation for why the Republican members of the Commission should enter mindlessly into a conspiracy to hide Able Danger and Gorelick's fault from the public is the Occam's Razor one - they didn't because there was no scandal to hide in the first place!

Yet if we needed further proof that many conservatives are simply yearning for any excuse to blame the hated Cinton administration for 9/11 then we could look at the Captain's Quarters blog today. Captain Ed, beloved of the UPC's Harkonnendog, runs a post on Able Danger and on a new Memo which has surfaced that suggests the Clinton administration may have made overtures to the Taliban to exchange US recognition of their regime for the handover of Osama binLaden.

Personally, I would have thought the good Captain would be ready to scour the Clintonites a new one for such flagrant exposure of the American meme of "spreading democracy and freedom" as total claptrap which covers a huge degree of American selfishness in thinking about or planning for the "War on Terror" - but no! Captain Ed has this to say instead:

Due to its oppressive regime and diplomatic incompetence, the Taliban actually had recognition from three nations at the time, all Islamic countries, notably Pakistan. The US opposed the Taliban on a number of criteria -- human-rights abuses, tyranny, and support for terrorism being among them. An offer that implied diplomatic recognition would have been considered extraordinary and may have created a huge headache for the Clinton administration, but could have disrupted 9/11 had it been successful.

Of course, once again the 9/11 Commission's final report makes no mention of this overture. I wonder what we will find tomorrow that the Commission overlooked.

If I am reading this right, Seaman Ed is saying that spreading democracy and freedom isn't as important to Midshipman Ed as the 3,000 lives lost in 9/11 if that means he gets to pound on the Clinton era for the loss of those lives. Where does that leave the 1,800 US troops who have died in the occupation of Iraq? Where does that leave the rhetoric of the Right and the Strategic Class of hawks on the Left?

I call hypocrisy.