Now that U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon has demonstrated massive failures in the way intelligence was gathered and used in the 1990s, people are asking why the Pentagon “withheld” information from the rest of the intelligence community.

On Dec. 8, 2004, I wrote the following:

” do we not remember what the Sept. 11 commission was all about? Both parties picked the cream of their crop in order to ensure that their party avoided responsibility for Sept. 11. Remember Jamie Gorelick? Does anybody take her seriously? If there is any one person responsible for Sept. 11, it is Mrs. Gorelick who, under directives from President Clinton, created the wall of separation’ in the FBI. Remember well that the result of this wall was that the FBI knew that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country, but couldn’t do anything about it, or tell those who could. Instead of showering the commission with praise, let’s ask why Mrs. Gorelick was prevented’ from testifying, as she was, coincidentally, a member of the commission.”

I bring this up now because the underlying message of recent articles in papers such as The New York Times and the like is that President Bush is somehow behind the Pentagon “withholding” the fact that we knew several of the hijacking terrorists were in the country. The fact is that, because of the Clinton/Gorelick wall, they could not share that information.

Frank Phillips, Auburn

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