Originally posted by: heartsurgeon
Isn't he the one who stopped flying commercial during the summer of '01?
This is just baloney
BEN-VENISTE: At some point in the spring or summer of 2001, around the time of this heightened threat alert, you apparently began to use a private chartered jet plane, changing from your use of commercial aircraft on grounds, our staff is informed, of an FBI threat assessment. And, indeed, as you told us, on September 11th itself you were on a chartered jet at the time of the attack.
Can you supply the details, sir, regarding the threat which caused you to change from commercial to private leased jet?
ASHCROFT: I am very please pleased to address this issue.
BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.
ASHCROFT: Let me indicate to you that I never ceased to use commercial aircraft for my personal travel.
ASHCROFT: My wife traveled to Germany and back in August. My wife and I traveled to Washington, D.C., on the 3rd of September before the 17th -- before the 11th attack on commercial aircraft.
I have exclusively traveled on commercial aircraft for my personal travel; continued through the year 2000, through the entirety of the threat period to the nation.
The assessment made by the security team and the Department of Justice was made early in the year. It was not related to a terrorism threat as a threat to the nation. It was related to an assessment of the security for the attorney general, given his responsibilities and the job that he undertakes. And it related to the maintenance of arms and other things by individuals who travel with the attorney general. And it was their assessment that we would be best served to use government aircraft.
These were not private chartered jet aircraft. These were aircraft of the United States government. And it was on such an aircraft that I was on my way to an event in Milwaukee on the morning of September the 11th.
you can take off your tin-foil hats now...
Ashcroft was in command during the testimony.
Ben-Veniste did not do his "attack dog" routine on him..
i think the dems have figured out that the public doesn't like these hearings turned into a political circus, and thet apear to be toning down the political rhetoric.
the glaring problem now is that Jamie Gorelick (a democrat, clinton appointee, AND MEMBER OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION) has been highlighted as a mofor reason the CIA and the FBI were not talking to eacj other!! She created the "wall" they kept talking about that prevented anyone from connecting the dots prior to 9/11. the dems have stepped into their own cowpie with the public hearings!!
Our agents were isolated by government-imposed walls, handcuffed by government-imposed restrictions and starved for basic information technology...The single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents. Government erected this wall, government buttressed this wall and before September 11th government was blinded by this wall....In 1995, the Justice Department embraced flawed legal reasoning, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required. ["the wall" was written by JAMIE GORELICK!!)..
ASHCROFT: The 1995 guidelines and the procedures developed around them imposed draconian barriers, barriers between the law enforcement and intelligence communities. The wall effectively excluded prosecutors from intelligence investigations. The wall left intelligence agents afraid to talk with criminal prosecutors or agents. In 1995, the Justice Department designed a system that was destined to fail.
In the days before September 11th, the wall specifically impeded the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, investigation of Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi.
After the FBI arrested Moussaoui, agents became suspicious of his interest in commercial aircraft and sought approval for a criminal search warrant to search his computer. The warrant was rejected because FBI officials feared breaching the wall.
ASHCROFT: The basic architecture for the wall in the 1995 guidelines was contained in a classified memorandum entitled "Instructions for Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations."
The memorandum ordered FBI Director Louis Freeh and others, quote, "We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued criminal investigations.
"These procedures," the memo went on to say, "which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."
This memorandum laid the foundation for a wall separating the criminal and intelligence investigations, as a matter of fact, established the wall following the 1993 World Trade Center attack, which at the time was the largest international terrorism attack on American soil, the largest prior to September 11th...Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission [Jamie Gorelick].
By 2000, the Justice Department was so addicted to the wall it actually opposed legislation to lower the wall. Finally, the USA Patriot Act tore down this wall between our intelligence and law enforcement personnel in 2001. And when the Patriot Act was challenged, the FISA court of review upheld the law, ruling that the 1995 guidelines were required by neither the Constitution nor the law.
so basically, a bunch of Clinton lawyers created govermental barriers that prevented the dots from getting connected in regards al qaeda. the patriot act corrected the problem.
those are the unrefuted facts.
i believe the 9/11 hearings are making it abundantly clear the the Dems are not to be trusted with national security issues.
heck they want to repeal the Patriot Act which corrected the bizarre legal construct which Gorelick had created, that made it impossible to coordinate intelligence about terrorists threats. Do you rteally want these same people in charge again?
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