Gorelick Connections?

Jack Cashill writes at WND, Apr. 16:

As a last question to former FBI head Louis Freeh, 9-11 Commissioner John Lehman asked whether Freeh was familiar with the information Jayna Davis has gathered for her new book, "The Third Terrorist." Davis, a former Oklahoma City newswoman, makes a powerful case that Terry Nichols had conspired with convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines and that Timothy McVeigh had received direct aid in the construction and delivery of the bomb from, among others, likely Iraqi agent, Hussain Al-Hussaini, the alleged John Doe #2.

This was an excellent question. Lehman, however, addressed it to the wrong person. He should have turned to his fellow commissioner, Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997. The Landmark Legal Foundation has now formally requested that Gorelick step down because she is "hopelessly conflicted." But truth would be served if instead of stepping down Gorelick were forced to open up.

Evidence strongly suggests it was Gorelick – not the ineffectual Freeh – who not only misdirected the FBI's investigation into Oklahoma City, but also the FBI investigation into TWA Flight 800. The parallels between the two cases are shocking. And in each case, the Clinton administration constrained the FBI for the same reason: to advance the re-election chances of its standard bearer....

Moreover, Andrew McCarthy writes at NRO, Apr. 15 (sorry I missed this last week):

.... Here, sports fans, is Conflicts 101: You rob a bank; as you are fleeing, there's a woman at the door who sees you, but you point your gun at her, she ducks to the floor, and you skip around her and make your escape. You are arrested and brought to trial. When you get to the courtroom and glimpse up at the bench, who do you see wearing a black robe? Why, it's the woman who witnessed the bank robbery. No way, you say — and you'd be right — the court will find you another judge because this one is an actor in the facts that are the subject matter of the case.

It doesn't matter that the judge happens to be the hardest working, best, most accomplished jurist in the land. It doesn't matter that she is so apolitical no one knows whether she even votes, let alone for whom. Most of all, it doesn't matter that she may not have done anything wrong or anything to be ashamed of. Her conflict does not lie in her work ethic, her political views, or what we might think of her conduct. It is strictly a matter of perception. We have reason to think that she will render judgment based on what she saw in the bank that day rather than what gets presented in the courtroom; we have reason to think she may rule against you not on the merits of your legal arguments but because you pointed a gun at her. Of course, she may not actually do any of those inappropriate things; she may be the very epitome of rectitude. But even if she is, we will always wonder. And if we are left to wonder, the court's rulings lack integrity and legitimacy. If you get convicted, we'll think you might have been railroaded; if acquitted, we'll think you may have intimidated the judge. But one way or the other, we will never be confident that we know what happened in the bank that day.

The situation, of course, is worse if we slightly tweak the scenario so that our judge is no longer just a mere witness who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Let's now say that, as you were trying to flee the bank, the police had a good opportunity to catch you. But the woman/judge in the bank prevented them from doing so by grabbing an officer — not out of an intention to help you but because she was understandably frightened. You now are able to get out of the bank, and you kill a pedestrian as you speed away in a waiting car.

Now our judge's conflict is even more profound. She is not merely an actor in the facts; she has actually done something, however innocently, that may have contributed to the damage. She now has a powerful motive to skew the fact-finding. We have to worry that she would use her position as judge to steer the trial away from any inquiry into how her actions may have led to the pedestrian's death. The trial is now likely to veer into overblown recriminations about less salient matters, like whether the police were aggressive enough or whether the pedestrian was crossing the street against the traffic light when he was struck. Worse, the perversion of the fact-finding is so patent, and it draws so much outraged attention to the flawed process, that we begin to lose sight of the fact that the real culprit here is you, the bank robber/murderer, not the police, the pedestrian, or our unfortunate panicky judge....

See my An Accomplice Got Onto the Jury.

And, speaking of Oklahoma City, lookee what turned up yesterday:

A Secret Service document written shortly after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing described security video footage of the attack and witness testimony that suggested Timothy McVeigh may have had accomplices at the scene.

"Security video tapes from the area show the truck detonation 3 minutes and 6 seconds after the suspects exited the truck," the Secret Service reported six days after the attack on a log of agents' activities and evidence in the Oklahoma investigation.

The government has insisted McVeigh drove the truck himself and that it never had any video of the bombing or the scene of the Alfred P. Murrah building in the minutes before the April 19, 1995, explosion.

Several investigators and prosecutors who worked the case told The Associated Press they had never seen video footage like that described in the Secret Service log.

The document, if accurate, is either significant evidence kept secret for nine years or a misconstrued recounting of investigative leads that were often passed by word of mouth during the hectic early days of the case, they said.

"I did not see it," said Danny Defenbaugh, the retired FBI agent who ran the Oklahoma City probe. "If it shows what it says, then it would be significant." ....

See The Middle Eastern Connection to 1990s Terrorism in America.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 04/20/04 06:00:12 PM
Categorized as Political.