Posted on 04/27/2004 4:12:44 AM PDT by spycatcher
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft Monday requesting that the Department of Justice “produce any records relating to Deputy Attorney General (Jamie) Gorelick’s involvement in the development and promulgation of Attorney General Reno’s Procedures for Contacts Between the FBI and the Criminal Division Concerning Foreign Intelligence and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations.”
The letter was in response to the 9/11 Commission’s failure to hear testimony from a key Clinton administration Justice Department official, preventing the Congress from receiving a full accounting of intelligence and law enforcement procedures that led to the tragic attacks.
In the letter, the Senators wrote that, “It is clear that the relationship between the intelligence and law enforcement communities in the years before September 11th must be fully examined.”
Eleven Senators on Friday wrote the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, urging the panel to hear testimony from former deputy U.S. attorney general, and current Commission member, Jamie Gorelick. Over the weekend, that request was denied, preventing a full and complete picture of the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policy. Specifically, the Senators were looking for information on decisions that led to the “wall” preventing intelligence and law-enforcement organizations from fully cooperating in anti-terror efforts.
Sen. Graham chairs the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Corrections and Victim’s Rights. Sen. Cornyn chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights & Property Rights. Click here for the full text of the Cornyn-Graham letter.
Did the commission tell them to go urinate up a rope, or was the the refusal couched in some nice, flowerly bureaucrat-speak? Love to see the letter refusing the request.
From: http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040426-120617-3706r.htm
Newsweek, July 31, 1995 v126 n5 p28(2) Reno's darkest hours.
Reno has largely given up making policy and instead spends her time making speeches outside Washington. (She’s visited 37 states so far.) Meanwhile, she has ceded day-to-day management of Justice to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. Reno is “frustrated by the bureaucracy,” says one acquaintance. The federal law-enforcement bureaucracy is proving vexing right now, from revelations that FBI agents attended a racist gathering in Tennessee to the recent demotion of Deputy FBI Director Larry Potts over the controversial 1992 shoot-out with white supremacist Randy Weaver. Justice and FBI officials have publicly differed on who pushed to dump Potts, and aides say relations between Gorelick and FBI Director Louis Freeh have turned frosty. (“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Gorelick insists.)
"...It has been an open secret in Washington that the Department of Justice was run by her hardheaded deputy, Jamie Gorelick"
"...Recall, too, that during the time of Ms. Gorelick's 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh's FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from foreign sources, involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie. Mr. Trie later told investigators that between 1994 and 1996 he raised some $1.2 million, much of it from foreign sources, whose identities were hidden by straw donors. Ms. Gorelick resigned as deputy attorney general in 1997 to become vice chairman of Fannie Mae."
Ex-Clinton Aide Is Linked to Big Chinese Project http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a1001102.htm
"In the months after Webster Hubbell was forced to resign to face a criminal investigation in 1994, the former associate attorney general received more than $400,000 from about a dozen enterprises, including the organizers of a multibillion-dollar development in China that received the endorsement of the Clinton administration, according to associates of Hubbell and to government records.
Some payments to Hubbell came from businesses controlled by old friends and campaign donors of President Clinton, according to the friends and witnesses interviewed by investigators. Many of those who paid Hubbell, a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton and one of the Clintons' closest friends, were regulars at the White House fund-raising coffees or overnight guests in the Lincoln Bedroom.
But the largest payments appear to have come from Hong Kong-based businesses controlled by the Riady family of Indonesia that have been dealing with the Chinese government. These businesses are central to a $2 billion American-Chinese joint project in the Fujian Province of China that received crucial backing from the administration at about the same time that Hubbell was being paid, according to government records and people who have been questioned by investigators.
The late Ronald Brown, who was then the secretary of commerce, announced the American endorsement of the project on a groundbreaking trade mission to Beijing in August 1994, two months after Hubbell was put on the payroll of a Riady family company. Afterward, an Arkansas associate of the Riadys left a message with a friend in the administration saying the Riady-controlled Lippo financial group was "very happy" with the outcome of the trip...."
http://users.aol.com/beachbt/china.txt
"In January 1994, on the personal instructions of Ron Brown, the commerce secretary, Huang was given top-secret security clearance without background checks by the FBI or the state depart ment's Office of Security a strict requirement for somebody born in a foreign country. This gave him access to vital American intelligence. Six months later, he was given a post in the commerce department and went with Brown on a trade mission to Peking. "By the time Brown and Huang went to China in July 1994, there was $5.5 billion (£3.3 billion) in deals ready to be signed," said a Republican investigator. "Never in the history of America's trade relations with China has so much been put together so fast."
In the commerce department, Huang had access to much of the intelligence delivered daily to the department by the CIA that relates to economic and trade secrets gathered around the world. He also received weekly intelligence briefings from the CIA. Shortly before joining the administration, Huang was given a $900,000 pay-off by the Lippo Group. However, he continued to keep in close touch with Mochtar Riady, his former boss at the Lippo Group. Huang was also busy as a fundraiser for the Democrats, generating $5m in the past 12 months, including a $450,000 donation from Lippo. Some of those donations were illegal and in the past month the Democrats have returned $500,000. In the past two years Huang has visited the White House about 70 times and had several meetings with Clinton unprecedented access for a relatively low-level official."
And not just Gorelick. Lehman's signature is on the paperwork for two of Kerry's medals, isn't it?
And the Dems complained about the $40 million that Ken Starr spent doing a legitimate investigation over 3 years.
My little China Girl
You shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you television
I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you man who wants to rule the world
And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby just you shut your mouth
She says ... shhhhhhh
She says
She says
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