The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XXVI

News that the witnesses previously banned from testifying will now be allowed to testify:

The Defense Department on Friday reversed its earlier decision to bar key witnesses from testifying about just how much information the U.S. government had on the Sept. 11 hijackers before they led the attacks that killed 3,000 people.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has therefore scheduled a second hearing for next week on the formerly secret Pentagon intelligence unit called “Able Danger”. …

The Senate Judiciary Committee said in a statement Friday that the Pentagon now will allow five witnesses to testify. Among those are Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and defense contractor John Smith.

I wonder what caused this? Did they underestimate the legs of this story?

I just have to bring attention to AJStrata, the man all things Able Danger, who has written a great post outlining the China/Clinton connection:

I am going to try to establish another ?baseline? of what looks pretty solid and then from there speculate further. To recap the big picture and players we need to go back to well before Able Danger to get some context.

(1) Clinton is in his last year before the 2000 elections. Clinton was just coming through the impeachment nightmare which ran from Jan 1998, when AG Reno had authorized Ken Starr to expand his work to include the Paula Jones and Lewinsky matter, through the impeachment trial itself which started in Jan 1999 and ended in Feb 1999. This is important to recall as it sets the tone of entire country at the time.

(2) Jamie Gorelick?s Biography shows she was General Counsel at Department of Defense may 1993-1994. She then moved to Department of Justice to the position of Deputy AG where she authored her famous ?Wall? memo. Finally, she left government to go into private practice in 1997.

…(3) In 1997 and through 2000 Douglas A. Dworkin worked as Deputy General Counsel and then as General Counsel for the Department of Defense. He basically had the same position as Gorelick when she was at the Department of Defense.

…It seems Dworkin was possibly a very political and partisan Counsel watching out for Clinton and Gore.

(4) Daniel Marcus, 9-11 Commission General Counsel (the guy who determines when conflicts of interest arise) was at the Clinton White House as Senior Counsel in the Office of White House Counsel starting in 1998 and into 1999. In 1999 he went on to become Associate Attorney General under Reno. He has been an associate of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering – a law firm set up by Lloyd Cutler. Yes, that Lloyd Cutler who was counsel the Bill Clinton. And the firm Gorelick was once a partner with

(5) Chinagate was fast becoming the next top scandal in 1999. The combination of key technology being passed to China and the hints of Chinese donations to Clinton/Gore made China a very volatile subject.

…Now we have established the tone in around the US government in 1999, which was one of high tension and legal wrangling. And Clinton cronies were well placed throughout administration in key positions.

…In the fall of 1999 Able Danger starts up and begins two prototype studies to determine what can come of data mining on public information. Able Danger selected technology being used by LIWA, under Dr. Eilleen Preisser, using the Orion company as contractor to purchase and process the information. Orion and JD Smith developed the charts with potential terrorists and linkages

…What happens in the first 6 months of Able Danger is pivotal. One study is on terrorists associated with Al Qaeda and the other is on China and its infiltration into the US. Orion and LIWA run their data and then everything breaks lose.

The China chart was put together by James Smith, who confirmed yesterday that his contract with the military was canceled and he was fired from his company because the military brass became concerned about the focus on U.S. citizens.

?It was shut down in a matter of hours. The colonel said our service was no longer needed and told me: ?You just ended my career.? ?

…So what was it that Able Danger uncovered? I doubt finding the name of Dr. Rice would do much. But how about the name John Podesta? Podesta was Clinton?s Chief of Staff from 1998 – 2001.

…The answers to Able Danger lie in who ordered the destruction of the data, who ordered the halt to meetings between SOCOM and the FBI, and who, at the end of the Clinton administration, was trying to tie up all the lose ends to this mess before the Bush team transition in.