Congressman Calls For 9/11 Panel Member to Step Down

WASHINGTON — House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) called for Jamie Gorelick to resign from the Sept. 11 commission Wednesday, citing a memo she wrote as a deputy attorney general on separating counterintelligence from criminal investigations.

Gorelick, a Democrat, said she would not resign and suggested that the Wisconsin lawmaker might be looking for a way to silence her.

“When you ask hard questions of people who are in office, they take offense,” she said.

The Republican chairman of the bipartisan commission, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, backed her up, telling reporters, “People ought to stay out of our business.”

Gorelick’s tenure has become an issue in the wake of the recent declassification of a memo she wrote in 1995 while serving in the Justice Department during the Clinton administration. It contained instructions for officials to keep counterintelligence “more clearly separate” from criminal intelligence.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, appearing before the panel Tuesday, released the memo and said that a “wall” between counterintelligence and criminal investigations was a key impediment to terrorism probes before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Scrutiny of this policy lies at the heart of the commission’s work,” Sensenbrenner said. “Ms. Gorelick has an inherent conflict of interest as the author of this memo and as a government official at the center of the events in question.

“Thus, I believe the commission’s work and independence will be fatally damaged by the continued participation of Ms. Gorelick as a commissioner.”

Appearing on CNN, Gorelick said: “All of the commission members have some government experience. Everyone is subject to the same recusal policies. You could have had a commission with nobody who knew anything about government, and I don’t think it would have been a very helpful commission.”

Kean, asked about the issue at a news conference, dismissed the request and said Gorelick was one of the hardest-working and unbiased members of the commission. He also said she had recused herself from involvement in issues on which she worked while serving in government.