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One of the best jobs in America today is that of being a 'former'. Former White House Communication Director George Stephanopolis parlayed his 'former' status into a full-time job as an ABC political 'news' commentator.

One wonders why the opinions of the former 9/11 Commission now are more relevant than their actions then -- when they were when they were the 'current' 9/11 Commission?

Former 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick got her job on the commission due to her status as a 'former' -- she was Janet Reno's Assistant Attorney General.

In that capacity, it was Jamie Gorelick who authored the policy that CREATED the legal firewall prohibiting transfers of information between the FBI and CIA. The Commission determined that policy was the single biggest contributor to the success of the 9/11 hijackers.

Gorelick was also instrumental in keeping the Commission from investigating Operation Able Danger, a computer analysis project that identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers well in advance of the attacks.

Representative Curt Weldon displayed charts on the floor of the U.S. Senate showing that Able Danger identified the four terrorists in 1999. The unit repeatedly asked for the information to be forwarded to the FBI but apparently to no avail.

Incredibly, the information on Able Danger never reached the Commission. "The Sept. 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," said former co-chair Lee Hamilton, former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."

Six months after Able Danger identified Atta as leader of an al-Qaeda Brooklyn cell, the group was disbanded when their budget was axed by the Clinton administration.

At about the same time that Gorelick was keeping a lid on Operation Able Danger, another 'former' -- former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and soon-to-be former John Kerry campaign advisor -- was caught stealing classified documents from the National Archives.

Berger was acting on behalf of the former Clinton administration, allegedly screening classified memoranda looking for information useful to the Commission.

Instead, Berger was caught stealing classified documents, some of which were never recovered. Berger claimed he 'lost them'. One would assume that Berger, as National Security Advisor, was intimately acquainted with Operation Able Danger. What would panic a professional like Sandy Berger so much he would take such a risk? (Perhaps he already knew the risk was minimal if he got caught)

Incredibly, not only did the formers at the 9/11 Commission never get to follow up on Able Danger, Sandy Berger was sentenced to a slap on the wrist; he was fined and barred from the political arena until 2008.

The penalty was meaningless; whoever was behind Berger could well afford the fine. The provision barring Berger from national politics for the duration of the Bush administration was even more meaningless -- unless one believes Berger might have been in the running for a Bush cabinet job.

Anyway, this august former body of former officials, having done such a bang-up job of exonerating the Clinton administration, is now issuing a report on the Bush administration that, in the words of former Clinton official Jamie Gorelick, is more 'F's than 'A's.

All of the relevant formers, from Richard Clarke to Jamie Gorelick to Joe Wilson, have used the former 9/11 Commission to exact political revenge on the administration -- and have seen their own fortunes rise in the process.

Wilson's testimony was openly discounted by the Commission as unreliable -- he is now a much sought after 'expert' on the 'truth' about the Bush administration's evil intentions.

Richard Clarke managed to remake himself as both a champion of the war on terror under Clinton and a victim under Bush, (which helped his new career as a best-selling author).
'Formers' pretty much dominate the news networks across the board -- Fox and CNN have literal brigades of 'formers' on retainer.

From former attorneys-general to former Secretaries of State to former military officers to former ambassadors, if you want an expert opinion, there's a former out there somewhere ready, willing and able to craft you the finest opinion money can buy.

Spinning 'formers' into propagandists is a relatively young technique, but it is being deployed with great skill by practitioners of the brainwashing arts on both sides of the political spectrum.

By the way, did you ever notice that there are only TWO sides? Not three, five, seven or a million -- just two -- each a mirror image of the other?

One is either anti-war or pro-war. One is either liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, Christian or anti-Christian. There seems to be no room in the center.

And for every agenda, there is a 'former' out there waiting for the opportunity to advance it.

Want to discredit US foreign policy? Call Clinton's former Secretary of State Madeline Albright. Want to praise it? Call Bush 41's Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.

'Formers' add considerable presence to any agenda; when former Congresswoman and former Vice-Presidential Candidate Geraldine Ferraro gives her opinion on why the Bush administration is incompetent and dishonest, what people note is that she was elected to Congress and ran for Vice-President.

The fact she was part of a Democratic ticket so liberal it lost by nearly two-thirds to Reagan/Bush (57 million to 37 million) or that her Congressional lifetime liberal voting record was near 80% are stats known only to political junkies; to John and Mary Public, being a 'former' means instant credibility.

An Associated Press report on the administration's handling of the war on terror used the word 'former' no less than nine times in a story under the headline; "Former 9/11 Commissioners: US At Risk." The opening paragraph sets the stage:

"The U.S. is at great risk for more terrorist attacks because Congress and the White House have failed to enact several strong security measures, members of the former Sept. 11 commission said Sunday."

The AP goes on to explain that the 'formers' that made up the former 9/11 Commission are furious with the White House and Republican-led Congress for not enacting their recommendations.

The fact that most of the main recommendations were adopted by the White House, including the creation of an Intelligence Czar, wasn't evidently relevant to the AP's report. But I digress. . .

The former 9/11 Commission, headed by former Chairman and former Republican Governor Thomas Keane, together with former vice-Chair and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton -- along with eight other 'formers' are now part of a 'privately-funded' group known as the "9/11 Public Discourse Project".

Privately funded? Perhaps a peek at the Project's main benefactors might be illuminative in determining the Project's agenda:

The Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Drexel Family Foundation. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The John S. and Lames L. Knight Foundation. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Smith Richardson Foundation, Inc. -- if the names sound familiar, that's because they are among PBS's principle benefactors, as well as dozens of other liberal or globalist causes.

The now-privately funded former 9/11 Commission and its ten former commissioners issued its assessment of how the Bush administration has dropped the ball in enacting the recommendations of its final report, issued in July, 2004.

ABC News chose former 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick to explain the former commission's unsolicited assessment under the ominous headline: "We're Less Safe."

"The 9/11 Public Discourse Project will release a "report card" Monday on how well the government has implemented the 41 recommendations made by the federal 9/11 commission in July 2004 — and it's not going to be a good one, says former 9/11 commissioner Jaime Gorelick....

"No parent would be pleased with this report card," she said. "I think that we're less safe than we were 18 months ago," she added. "We have a tremendous agenda and we have just not been about doing what we need to make us safe."

Later on, the article quotes Gorelick saying, "We've taken down the legal walls," she said, "but the culture is still prohibiting the kind of information sharing we need to have." "
Jamie Gorelick re-invented herself as a crusader against a policy she herself authored in one of her former lives.

The main headline is now what the Democrats have been saying all along; that America is less safe now than it was before, thanks to Bush's mismanagement. The leading spokesperson is the Clinton official most responsible for the policy that the 9/11 Commission said was the single biggest contributor to the attacks.

The fact that there hasn't BEEN an attack since 9/11 is no more relevant than the fact the investigators are their own principle suspects.

Up is down, black is white, and the March Hare is late for tea. . . welcome to the 21st century.

Excerpted from the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest, Volume 51, Issue 5

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