... Frankly, given her blatant conflicts of interest, she should never have been appointed in the first place. One stunning Gorelick conflict emerged at Tuesday’s public commission hearing: Attorney General John Ashcroft disclosed that in 1995, Gorelick - while deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton - wrote a memo ordering the FBI to separate counterintelligence work from criminal investigations. As Ashcroft put it, this memo - which went beyond what federal law required - erected a legal wall between the FBI and CIA, creating "the single greatest structural cause for September 11." So. How can someone who played a key role in the events under investigation possibly sit as one of the investigators?
| Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but then, I'm not a politician... |
Indeed, Gorelick has a proper role to play with the commission - as a witness, grilled under oath about her own actions. And what was Commission Chairman Tom Kean’s response to calls for Gorelick’s dismissal or resignation? "People ought to stay out of our business," he huffed. Funny, but isn’t the commission meant to be conducting the people’s business?
| Apparently not. Perhaps we should butt out entirely? We seem to be disturbing them... |
As it turns out, the memo is just the tip of the iceberg concerning Gorelick’s questionable fitness as a member of the panel. That’s because she’s a litigation partner in one of Washington’s most high-powered Democratic law firms - Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. And that firm represents Prince Mohammed al-Faisal al-Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family and director of a key Saudi financial agency, against a lawsuit filed by a coalition of 600 Sept. 11 families. The lawsuit, filed by Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism, seeks "to cut off the pipeline that fueled the al Qaeda terrorists" - a pipeline in which the high-paying client represented by Gorelick’s law firm reportedly played a central part. The prince is chairman of Dar al-Maal al-Islami (DMI), which boasts $1 billion in assets. One of its subsidiaries is the Al-Shamil Islamic Bank, whose directors include Osama bin Laden’s half-brother and his brother-in-law. According to congressional testimony last October by Jean-Charles Brisard, an international expert on terrorism financing, the Swiss-based DMI "is one of the central structures in Saudi Arabia’s financing of international Islam," and is rooted in the House of Saud’s "support for the radical Islamic cause." DMI, according to published reports, was a major shareholder of a Bahamian Islamic bank that was shut down after Washington tabbed it a centerpiece of Osama bin Laden’s financial network.
| I feel so... not comforted. |
Though Gorelick may not be litigating the lawsuit, as a partner she profits from her firm’s work for the Saudi prince. Gorelick, who might have become attorney general in an Al Gore administration, could get that same job if John Kerry wins in November. If all of this is not intolerable for a 9/11 commissioner, then there’s no such thing as conflict of interest. The blatant anti-Bush partisanship demonstrated by Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey long ago brought disgrace upon the commission. Now this. What a sick, sad joke. |