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Corrupt Government Title: Clinton Official Gorelick Involved in 9/11 & Subprime Loan Crisis Controversies Shortlisted to Run FBI (CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration reportedly is considering former Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick, among others, to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Perez first reported the news last week, citing “U.S. officials” familiar with the situation. Gorelick served as vice chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) when the government-sponsored enterprise began bundling subprime loans into securitized financial instruments. Prior to that, she served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department under then-Attorney General Janet Reno from 1994 to 1997. In 1997 President Bill Clinton appointed Gorelick to Fannie Mae, where former Clinton budget director Franklin D. Raines was also serving as chairman. In 2001, Gorelick announced that Fannie was buying subprime loans encouraged by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and bundling them as securitized financial instrument--the same securities that ultimately plagued the balance sheets of financial institutions such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers once the housing market suffered a downward correction in 2008. “Fannie Mae will buy CRA loans from lenders' portfolios; we'll package them into securities; we'll purchase CRA mortgages at the point of origination; and we'll create customized CRA-targeted securities,” she said in 2001. “This expanded approach has improved liquidity in the secondary market for CRA product, and has helped our lenders leverage even more CRA lending. Lenders now have the flexibility to use their own, customized loan products.” Since then, Fannie Mae and its counterpart, Freddie Mac, have both seen dramatic balance sheet problems and their stocks trade below a dollar. Gorelick, however, left the company in 2003, having reportedly collected about $26 million in salary, benefits and bonuses. But Gorelick is perhaps best known for her 1995 memo, written when she was deputy attorney general, that later became known as “Gorelick’s Wall,” a policy prescription limiting the flow of information between intelligence gatherers and criminal investigators that some believe helped allow the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center to go unchallenged. Gorelick wrote the memo, “Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations,” in order to set guidelines for concurrent investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by both criminal investigators and intelligence officers within the Department of Justice. Rules stemming from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), under which the intelligence community was operating as part of its investigation, stipulates that information may only be gathered by way of surveillance for the primary purpose of intelligence, not to contribute to a criminal case under which defendants have more constitutional protections. Gorelick sought to make clear in her memo that investigators of both stripes were adhering to FISA precedent and not misappropriating the authority to undermine the rights of any defendant. “These procedures, 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,” Gorelick wrote. Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft later testified before the 9/11 Commission that Gorelick’s “wall” was a “structural cause” in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 being allowed to occur. In his prepared testimony, he said, “In 1995 the Justice Department, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required. … The single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents. Government erected this wall. Government buttressed this wall. And before September 11, government was blinded by this wall.” After Ashcroft’s commission testimony, Gorelick published a commentary in The Washington Post saying that his accusations were false, and that the “wall” predated her tenure by decades. "I did not invent the ‘wall,’ which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it,” she wrote. Gorelick made no mention in the commentary of her proclamation in the 1995 memo that she was going “beyond what [was] legally required” in her prescriptions for handling the cases related to the 1993 bombings. However, in the months leading up to 9/11, Ashscroft’s Justice Department also failed to dismantle the rules codified in 1995 or challenge the more general culture in the department that information should be partitioned. Gorelick’s name appears on the shortlist along with counterintelligence experts such as former Bush Deputy Attorney General James Comey; former Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein; U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald; and D.C. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland, whom President Obama also reportedly considered for a Supreme Court appointment. Gorelick has since worked for the defense in the Duke Lacrosse sexual harassment scandal and has lobbied on behalf of beleaguered British Petrolium (BP). Current FBI Director Robert Mueller’s 10-year term expires in September of this year.
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