| Jamie S. Gorelick |
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Critics say her duties on the commission represent a conflict of interest, contending that she is the single greatest cause of the organizational failures within intelligence that contributed to the September 11 2001 attacks. Former acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard said that Gorelick had played a key role in setting the very counterterrorism policies being investigated. During her tenure at the Justice Department, which controls the FBI, she opposed FBI initiatives to work more closely with other US agencies to investigate and prevent terrorism, according to Pickard. Conservative media pundits such as Rush Limbaugh have accused Gorelick of helping to construct a 'wall' during her years at the Justice Department. However, government reports cited in the wake of the Able Danger scandal appear to contradict such claims, asserting that the 'wall' has existed since the 80's and is in fact not one singular wall but a series of restrictions passed over the course of sixty years. Others acknowledge that Gorelick did invent the wall. The wall was not a set of procedures implementing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (" FISA ") as construed by federal decisional law. A Gorelick 1995 memorandum states that the procedures her memorandum put in place "''go beyond what is legally required''... {Link without Title} prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation." (Emphasis added.) The wall intentionally exceeded the requirements of FISA and then-existing federal case law. Gorelick served as Vice Chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association from 1997 to 2003 . Before serving as Deputy Attorney General of the United States, she was General Counsel of the Department of Defense and a prominent attorney with the firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin. She also served as an assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Energy from 1979 to 1980. Gorelick was president of the District of Columbia Bar from 1992 to 1993. She is currently a law partner in the Washington office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale And Dorr and a non-executive director of the Oilfield Services Provider Schlumberger Ltd. |
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