The Clinton Legacy

Monica? Whitewater? Renting out the White House? Selling missle technology to Communist China? It's hard to tell what will be the enduring legacy of Bill Clinton. However, if you've been following the Able Danger story this week, it has be a strong contender for Clinton legacy status.

What the heck is Able Danger you say? I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't heard of it. As usual, the MSM has been focused on "gripping" stories like Cindy Sheehan. (While it's tragic that her son died in Iraq, that's no excuse for her to use it as justification for her grand-standing -- in fact, it's shameful.)

In a nutshell, "Able Danger was a military intelligence unit set up by Special Operations Command in 1999. A year before the 9/11 attacks, Able Danger identified hijack leader Mohammed Atta and the other members of his cell. But Clinton administration officials stopped them - three times - from sharing this information with the FBI." (this nutshell courtesy of Jack Kelly in the Toledo Blade.)

That's right, 2 years before 9/11, a U.S. intelligence agency had information on these terrorists but was unable to forward it to the FBI because of Clinton administration policies. One policy was to treat terrorism was a "law enforcement" issue. The other policy was formulated by former Clintonista Jamie Gorelick and created rules prohibiting our intelligence agencies from sharing vital intelligence with our law enforcement agencies. (As you may know, Gorelick was a member of the 9/11 commission. How ironic that one of the people investigating the intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attacks was one of the people responsible for those failures! Check out this archived post from Power Line for the story behind Gorelick's role in creating the conditions that made 9/11 possible.)

In closing, check out this column from Mark Steyn on the Able Danger debacle.

Oh, and while I'm sure this picture was taken as some kind of a joke, it sure does aptly capture how the Clinton Adminstration treated the security of our nation.