US Media fails to say "wall" re Atta info is a Reagan/Bush/Bush Wall

[papau]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200508110001

http://mediamatters.org/static/audio/limbaugh-200508110001.mp3

Limbaugh falsely blamed Clinton administration for "wall" that purportedly prevented intelligence sharing about 9-11 hijackers
Listen to this audio clip On the August 9 and 10 broadcasts of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh falsely accused the Clinton administration of enacting a policy that prevented the Pentagon from sharing intelligence -- one year before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon -- about lead 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. In fact, the policy, often referred to as a "wall," was established well before Clinton took office http://mediamatters.org/items/200405200005#20050811 and was retained by the Bush administration; it is unclear whether the "wall" played any role in the decision to withhold information about Atta.

Criticizing a New York Times article http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/politics/09intel.html?ei=5090&en=bc4d02afa0a46012&ex=1281240000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print for "hid" the reason for withholding information about Atta, Limbaugh asserted on August 9 that former Clinton deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick was responsible for creating the "wall" that restricted information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies prior to the September 11 attacks and that the "wall" prevented the Pentagon intelligence operation Able Danger from disclosing to the FBI or CIA the Al Qaeda connections of Atta and three other future hijackers. Limbaugh repeated the claim on August 10: "They couldn't forward the information to law enforcement because there was a wall which prevented them from doing so, erected by Jamie Gorelick, who ran the Justice Department while Janet Reno was the face of that department."

But the joint House and Senate intelligence committees' report of pre-September 11 intelligence failures did not find that the "wall" originated in the Clinton administration; the report states http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/24jul20031400/www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf#page=415 : "The 'wall' is not a single barrier, but a series of restrictions between and within agencies constructed over 60 years as a result of legal, policy, institutional and personal factors." Similarly, a ruling by the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review -- when it met for the first time in 2002 -- traces the origin of the "wall" to "some point during the 1980s."http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fiscr111802.html

Nor did enforcement of the "wall" end with the Clinton administration. In his April 12, 2004, testimony before the 9-11 Commission, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft conceded http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9088-2004Apr13.html that his own deputy attorney general, Larry Thompson, reauthorized the "wall" in August 2001.


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