In the past week, conservative media -- including two New York Post columnists and two Post editorials -- have falsely suggested that information obtained by military intelligence purportedly identifying lead 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta may have been withheld from law enforcement officials because of a 1995 memo written by then-Clinton deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick. But the Gorelick memo and ensuing guidelines, which conservatives claim created a "wall" between intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, had nothing to do with military intelligence -- those documents addressed communications only among divisions within the Department of Justice. Moreover, as Media Matters for America has previously noted, the "wall" that conservatives accuse Gorelick of enacting had been operative well before Gorelick -- or Clinton -- took office.
While the truth remains unclear, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer have recently suggested that Shaffer's classified military intelligence unit Able Danger identified Atta more than a year before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but was unable to relay that information to the FBI.
But 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:
SUBJECT: Procedures for Contacts Between the FBI [intelligence/counterintelligence functions] and the Criminal Division Concerning Foreign Intelligence and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations
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