Gorelick allowed to draft report

September 11 commission member Jamie S. Gorelick, who recused herself from questioning some Clinton administration officials last week, still can help draft parts of the board’s final report on the “wall” between intelligence and law enforcement that she defended while in the Clinton Justice Department.

Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission, said Ms. Gorelick’s recusal applies to the time she was deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, so she is free to take part in the investigation and drafting of the report for anything that happened after she left.

That, he said, includes the legal barrier known as “the wall,” which prevented the sharing of information between law-enforcement and intelligence officials.

“The wall as it existed after she left, the wall as it existed in the beginning of the Bush administration, she’s perfectly free to ask questions about,” Mr. Felzenberg said.

Faced with her refusal to resign and what some of them have called a “circus” atmosphere at recent commission meetings, Republicans in the House, just back from a two-week recess, are stepping up their criticism.

At the weekly meeting of the House Republican Conference yesterday, Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas urged his colleagues to take the case to the public. And many of them already are doing that.

“The commission findings need to have truth and credibility, and with her remaining on the commission, that will not be the end result,” said Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida Republican. “For her to recuse herself on several issues still does not answer what I think most Americans want to know — and that is what she knows.”

And Rep. Jack Kingston, Georgia Republican, said the commission’s members haven’t impressed anyone.

“The commission is a reunion of political has-beens who haven’t had face time since ‘Seinfeld’ was a weekly show,” he said. “In their scramble to make the evening news, they’ve turned this grave matter into a get-even-for-Monica investigation — a switch the American people see right through.”

Attorney General John Ashcroft last week released a memo that Ms. Gorelick wrote in 1995, which he said showed she was responsible for bolstering the wall, which he said was a critical problem that led to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Republicans in Congress immediately began calling for her to step down entirely.

Ms. Gorelick, the panel’s Republican chairman and its Democratic vice chairman have rejected those calls, saying her recusals are enough.

“Commissioners should not be investigating or judging themselves. Nor, should they be looking back and judging any decisions that were made during their time in government by the agency where they worked. I plan to adhere to that policy,” she said.

The commission’s policy calls on members and staff not to lead interviews of former supervisors or employees that they supervised. It also calls on them to recuse themselves when they have a financial interest at stake and “from investigating work they performed in prior government service.”

So far, Ms. Gorelick’s recusal publicly has meant not questioning her boss at the Justice Department from 1994 to 1997, former Attorney General Janet Reno, or former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.

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