9/11 Commission

This is not the first time we have heard of FBI agents trying to get headquarters to act, during the 1990’s, and even as September 11, 2001 approached. But, the political establishment, with backing of the general public, had put into place a system that basically gave suspected terrorists the benefit of the doubt. By the way, Ms. Gorelick is now one of the 9/11 Commission members.

An excellent detailing of how the intelligence failure occurred can be found in the April 2004 edition of Commentary magazine, in an article by Andrew C. McCarthy, chief prosecutor of mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

The Patriot Act, passed in October of 2001, dismantled much of the wall, much to the dismay of civil libertarians who have since been trying to repeal significant portions of the act. Indeed, there are aspects of the act that could be abused to violate citizen’s civil rights. For informative critique of the act see the article in the Winter 2002 edition of Human Rights written by John Podesta, President Clinton’s last Chief of Staff.



	In the days before September 11, the wall specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. After the FBI arrested Moussaoui, agents became suspicious of his interest in commercial aircraft and sought approval for a criminal warrant to search his computer. The warrant was rejected because FBI officials feared breaching the wall. When the CIA finally told the FBI that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were in the country in late August, agents in New York searched for the suspects. But because of the wall, FBI headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the hunt for the suspected terrorists. At that time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote headquarters, quote, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not -- the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.'

	This is not the first time we have heard of FBI agents trying to get headquarters to act, during the 1990’s, and even as September 11, 2001 approached. But, the political establishment, with backing of the general public, had put into place a system that basically gave suspected terrorists the benefit of the doubt. By the way, Ms. Gorelick is now one of the 9/11 Commission members. An excellent detailing of how the intelligence failure occurred can be found in the April 2004 edition of Commentary magazine, in an article by Andrew C. McCarthy, chief prosecutor of mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack. The Patriot Act, passed in October of 2001, dismantled much of the wall, much to the dismay of civil libertarians who have since been trying to repeal significant portions of the act. Indeed, there are aspects of the act that could be abused to violate citizen’s civil rights. For informative critique of the act see the article in the Winter 2002 edition of Human Rights written by John Podesta, President Clinton’s last Chief of Staff. The question now is: how do we reasonably protect out civil rights without, as Andrew C. McCarty puts it, turning the Constitution into a suicide pact. W