Fun with Jaime!

Dick Morris says Gorelick U.S. Official Most Responsible for 9/11.

Mark Levin gives a concrete example in Millennial Mistake.

Nope says Gorelick, the statute of limitations has expired. Andrew McCarthy at NRO - The Appearance of Impropriety:

Chairman Kean should understand his business before he tells America to butt out of it

Compared to unraveling the intricate web of factual, legal, and bureaucratic circumstances attendant to the 9/11 attacks, judging conflicts of interest is Sesame Street stuff. The 9/11 Commission is assessing the intelligence lapses that may have factored into the suicide hijackings; it has been revealed that, as Deputy Attorney General in 1995, Commissioner Jamie Gorelick was a key architect of an information "wall" that virtually guaranteed just the types of intelligence lapses that occurred. That's a conflict, Q.E.D.

If Chairman Tom Kean and the other 9/11 Commission members now rallying around Gorelick cannot grasp that straightforward equation, they've got no business taking on the complexities of international terrorism and intelligence overhaul.
...
Finally, Gorelick's facile time defense, which Kean and the others have bought onto, is just lame — and is again grounds for concern about the commission's comprehension of simple issues. Gorelick, who was Deputy AG from 1994 until 1997, figures the problem is solved if she recuses herself from questioning witnesses — such as former AG Janet Reno and former FBI Director Louis Freeh — with whom she served closely during those years. Conflicts, however, are not time-specific so much as they are issue-specific. If you and I are investigated for stock fraud in 1997 and you get indicted for fraud in connection with the same stock in 2000, I don't get to be the judge in your case. I don't get to say, "What does 1997 have to do with 2000?" The issue is: Do I have involvement in the business practices and knowledge about your intentions that are core issues of the trial. If I do, someone else ought to be the judge.

The temporal defense is especially troubling for an additional reason. What happened on September 11, 2001, is borne on directly by practices, like the wall, which produced the patchwork body of intelligence, and screwy methods for handling it, that were in effect when al Qaeda succeeded in killing 3,000 of us. It was irresponsible of Gorelick, knowing that, to accept the appointment under those circumstances. But more importantly, what does inviting her to serve her say about the commission and those who designed it? It says we are making a judgment that nothing terribly relevant to 9/11 happened much before the Bush administration came to power. Given that we are in a war, and the body count started in 1993, that is simply stunning. It smacks of politics over a search for truth.

But there's some fun in the deal as the Washington Prowler reports in Gorelicks Her Wounds:

It shouldn't come as a big surprise that 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick has hidden agendas and conflicts of interest out the whazoo. After all, she's an old Clinton Administration hand.

Give her credit, though, she apparently isn't ashamed to hide them.

And there's a whole new crop:

According to an associate of hers at the D.C. power litigation shop of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, Gorelick has made no secret to friends and associates that she has been speaking regularly with people who prepped her former boss at the Department of Justice, Janet Reno.

While Gorelick is said by knowledgeable sources to have not actively participated in the prepping of Reno -- evidence of this was confirmed by Reno's addled testimony before the commission on Tuesday -- they said Gorelick did take an interest in the former attorney general's testimony preparation, and may have tipped the commission's hand on areas of interest. It was all for nothing, however, given Reno's rambling, at time incoherent and often inaccurate testimony.

"How could she not care?" asked a former Clinton staffer. "It was in her interest to have her former boss do well and defend the agency she helped to run."

It's sure swell of her to want to help the old crank. Of course, then there are her own statements too:

What set 9/11 commission staffers' off was the bomb dropped by Attorney General John Ashcroft, when he detailed the newly declassified memo that further buttressed the legal wall that forbade criminal investigators from sharing intelligence with the intelligence agencies. That memo, written by Gorelick when she was at DOJ, had not been requested by the 9/11 commission, because they didn't know about it.

"When we did our initial interviews with all of the commissioners, we asked if they had any knowledge, background information or potential insights into areas we might cover," says a commission staffer. "We asked Gorelick point blank about this kind of stuff and she said nothing about it. No one saw it coming. Even she seemed surprised. I don't know what she was thinking."

Gorelick was so stunned that she handed off her prepared questions for the attorney general to fellow commissioner, former Sen. Slade Gorton, who asked them for her.

"It's too late for her to step down. She should have had the sense and ethical makeup to not accept the commissioner's job. Now we're stuck, and everything this commission does now has the further stench of politics," says the staffer.

Aw c'mon fellas. She can figure out some way to quit. How about an attack of the vapors? Keep those cards and letters going to your local newspapers, folks!