Pacific Views

9/11 commissioner receives death threats.

The right wing assault on the 9/11 commission continues.

Today, we're finding out that 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick received death threats this week after Republicans charged her with contributing to the intelligence failures that led to the attacks in 2001.

A decade ago, Gorelick was a deputy US attorney general in the Clinton administration. During her tenure, she wrote a memo outlinng the differences between intelligence that could be used for law enforcement, and intelligence that could be used for national security purposes. While this 'wall' between the two types of intelligence was required by law when Gorelick was in the Justice Department, it has since been removed by the Patriot Act.

Since the existence of Gorelick's memo was revealed this week during testimony by current attorney general John Ashcroft, Republican legislators have called for her to resign from the committee, saying that her participation in maintaining the intelligence 'wall' is a conflict of interest. (Of course, these legislators are not mentioning conflicts of interest among Republican committee members and staffers.)

"I can confirm that I've received threats at my office and my home," she told CNN on Saturday. "I did get a bomb threat to my home."

She added, "I have gotten a lot of very vile e-mails. The bomb threat was by phone."

ABC News first reported the story Saturday.

The threats were "scary," she said, but added that she was "not intimidated enough to resign from the commission."

A law enforcement source told CNN that the FBI is investigating the threats.

Posted by Magpie at April 18, 2004 03:31 AM | War on Terrorism | Technorati links |