It just keeps getting better and better: 'Mistress of Disaster' Jamie Gorelick On President Obama's Short List for FBI Director

Word around the Beltway has it that longtime Democrat operative Jamie Gorelick is one of the favorites for the FBI director role under President Obama. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters, it's not often that the same person plays key roles in two -- count 'em, two -- trillion-dollar disasters.

In 2004, observers were "astonished" to discover that a key member of the 9/11 Commission had a fatal conflict-of-interest. Jamie Gorelick had served as a Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997.

It was later revealed that Gorelick had established a pre-Patriot Act "wall" that prevented the foreign intelligence and criminal investigative communities from collaborating.

Her 1995 memo, entitled "Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations", stated explicitly that they would "go beyond what is legally required, [to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."

The result: shortly before 9/11, Gorelick's wall "specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui", the so-called "20th hijacker."

At the time, an enraged FBI investigator wrote a memo to headquarters which included the sentence, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not -- the public will not understand why we were not more effective..."

The 2004 disclosure that Gorelick's service as a 9/11 Commissioner was the archetypical conflict-of-interest should have triggered a cacophony of complaints and demands for a new investigation. Instead, the mainstream media turned deaf and dumb and the controversy faded into the background.

Gorelick's "wall" wrapped a blindfold around America just when it needed its vision to stop the attacks that killed thousands and which sucked a half a trillion dollars out of the economy.

Where did Gorelick turn up next?

Though she had no training or experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period, she earned over $26 million.

During Gorelick's tenure, FNMA suffered a $10 billion accounting scandal, an ominous harbinger of the firm's looming troubles. One of the falsified transactions helped FNMA hit earnings targets for 1998, which triggered bonuses for top executives including nearly $800,000 to Gorelick.

Put simply "Jamie Gorelick was one of the Fannie executives who benefited from inflated bonuses based on Enron-style accounting."

In 2002 Business Week interviewed Gorelick concerning the health of FNMA. She responded, "We believe we are managed safely. We are very pleased that Moody's gave us an A-minus in the area of bank financial strength -- without a reference to the government in any way. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions."

Less than a year later regulators "accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses."

Today, of course, FNMA is on taxpayer-funded life support, currently trading at 27 cents a share. Its implosion devastated investors around the world. And because it was thought to have been "managed safely" (Gorelick's words), many top-flight financial services companies held its stock.

In 2008 it was revealed that top insurer AIG was toppled, in part, because it held $600 million in Fannie and Freddie. Roughly $4 billion in those stocks were held by insurers before the implosion, according to rating agency A.M. Best.

Put simply, FNMA's collapse helped touch off the entire financial crisis.

It's not often that one person plays such a key role in two unmitigated disasters.

Democrat Jamie Gorelick is just such a person; that is why she has earned her nom de guerre "The Mistress of Disaster".

What do you call someone with a Midas Touch, only instead of gold everything they touch turns to s***? That's what Gorelick's got.

Oh, and did I mention that Gorelick was also involved with subprime mortgage securitization?

I'm guessing we could link her family to a few other catastrophes if we did the legwork. Where were her parents when the Hindenberg exploded, for instance?


Update: "AFTER HER 9/11 AND HOUSING DEBACLE BACKGROUND who better for FBI Director than Jamie Gorelick?"


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