Levin: Declassify the Other Gorelick Memo

The next shoe to drop in the Gorelick-gate scandal may be a still-classified report on the Millennium bomb plot that faults Gorelick's "wall" of separation between prosecutors and intelligence gatherers for nearly blowing the Millennium Plot probe.

Writing in National Review Online, Landmark Legal Foundation President Mark Levin notes that the 9/11 Commission is sitting on a damaging post-Millennium-Plot report that chronicles the impact of Gorelick's terrorist-friendly directive, which Attorney General John Ashcroft alluded to during his Wednesday testimony.

Ashcroft said the report, dubbed the Millennium After Action Review by the Clinton National Security Council, chronicles how al-Qaida's role in the Millennium Plot was nearly missed because Gorelick's guidelines blinded U.S. prosecutors to critical intelligence in the case.

Though a hunch by an alert Washington-state Customs agent led to the capture of would-be Millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, when he was turned over to the Justice Department for interrogation, they "didn't have a clue who he was," Ashcroft told the Commission.

It took a French magistrate with full access to his own country's counterterrorism intelligence files to tip U.S. probers to the fact that they had nabbed one of al-Qaida's most dangerous operatives.

Ultimately, because of Gorelick's directive, the French magistrate had to travel to the U.S. and testify for seven hours to lay out Ressam's al-Qaida connection.

Said Levin:

The NSC's Millennium After Action Review — which, based on Attorney General Ashcroft's testimony, must be devastating in its analysis of not only this event but of the Gorelick policy — remains classified. ...

"Given all the past intelligence information that has been made public by the 9/11 Commission — including the August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief, which had never before been released — there appears to be no legitimate basis for the 9/11 Commission keeping the Review under lock and key. It's time to release it."

Editor's note: