Jamie S. Gorelick is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 attorney

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

, presently representing BP. She was Deputy Attorney General of the United States during the Clinton administration. She was appointed by former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle

Tom Daschle

Thomas Andrew "Tom" Daschle is a former U.S. Senator from South Dakota and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader. He is a member of the Democratic Party....

 to serve as a commissioner on the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which sought to investigate the circumstances leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001 attacks

The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

 and also served as Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae. Her involvement in many of the major tragedies and high-profile American scandals of the past two decades has led some in the press to dub her the "Mistress of Disaster."

Biography

Gorelick grew up in Great Neck

Great Neck, New York

The term Great Neck is commonly applied to a peninsula on the North Shore of Long Island, which includes the village of Great Neck, the village of Great Neck Estates, the village of Great Neck Plaza, and others, as well as an area south of the peninsula near Lake Success and the border of Queens...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 in a Jewish family and attended South High School. She obtained her A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

 in 1972, where she was designated Radcliffe

Radcliffe College

Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...

 Orator, and a J.D.

Juris Doctor

Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...

 cum laude from Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

 in 1975.

Gorelick joined the Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 law firm Miller, Cassidy, Larroca and Lewin in 1975 and worked for them as a litigator until 1993, except for 1979 to 1980 when she was an assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Energy

United States Secretary of Energy

The United States Secretary of Energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the President's Cabinet, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was formed on October 1, 1977 with the creation of the Department of Energy when President Jimmy...

. Gorelick was president of the District of Columbia Bar from 1992 to 1993.

Under the Clinton administration, Gorelick served as General Counsel of the Department of Defense

General Counsel of the Department of Defense

The General Counsel of the Department of Defense serves as the chief legal officer of the Department of Defense , advising both the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on all legal matters and services, and providing legal advice to OSD organizations and, as appropriate, other DOD components...

 from 1993 to 1994, when she was appointed Deputy Attorney General of the United States, the No. 2 position in the Department of Justice

United States Department of Justice

The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

. Gorelick served as Vice Chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association

Federal National Mortgage Association

The Federal National Mortgage Association , commonly known as Fannie Mae, was founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal. It is a government-sponsored enterprise , though it has been a publicly traded company since 1968...

 from 1997 to 2003.

She is currently a law partner in the Washington office of WilmerHale and a member of the boards of United Technologies Corporation

United Technologies Corporation

United Technologies Corporation is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in the United Technologies Building in Hartford, Connecticut...

, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...

, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and Legal Affairs.

Deputy Attorney General

While serving as Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton, Gorelick spoke in favor of banning the use of strong encryption and called for a key escrow

Key escrow

Key escrow is an arrangement in which the keys needed to decrypt encrypted data are held in escrow so that, under certain circumstances, an authorized third party may gain access to those keys...

 system to allow the Federal government access to encrypted communication.

Gorelick is currently a lobbyist for the lending industry fighting student loan reform

Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)

Even though she had no previous training nor experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed Vice Chairman of Federal National Mortgage Association

Federal National Mortgage Association

The Federal National Mortgage Association , commonly known as Fannie Mae, was founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal. It is a government-sponsored enterprise , though it has been a publicly traded company since 1968...

 (Fannie Mae) from 1997 to 2003. She served alongside former Clinton Administration official Franklin Raines

Franklin Raines

Franklin Delano "Frank" Raines is an American business executive. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton...

. During that period, Fannie Mae developed a $10 billion accounting scandal.

On March 25, 2002, Business Week interviewed Gorelick about the health of Fannie Mae. Gorelick is quoted as saying, "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." One year later, Government Regulators "accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses".

In an additional scandal concerning falsified financial transactions that helped the company meet earnings targets for 1998, a "manipulation" that triggered multimillion-dollar bonuses for top executives, Gorelick received $779,625.

Investigation by the OFHEO detailed in their official report on the accounting scandal in 2006 on page 66 that from 1998 to 2002 Gorelick received a total of $26,466,834.00 in income.

9/11 Commission

According to Gorelick's op-ed letter in the Washington Post she states that: "At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that 'the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents' and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo." See original memo: http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document_1995_gorelick_memo.pdf. However, the report from the 9/11 Commission, co-authored by Gorelick, asserts that the 'wall' limiting the ability of federal agencies to cooperate had existed since the 80's and is in fact not one singular wall but a series of restrictions passed over the course of over twenty years.

Conflict of Interest

A 1995 Department of Justice memorandum states that the procedures her memorandum put in place for the investigation of the first WTC bombing "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 wall intentionally exceeded the requirements of FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) for the purposes of criminal investigations, as well as the then-existing federal case law. These rules were, shortly after their creation, expanded to regulate such communications in future counter-terrorism investigations.

Ms. Gorelick eventually recused herself from reviewing her own role in the regulation of information about terrorist activities. Attorney General Ashcroft was incensed before the 9/11 commission to learn that the commission had not investigated or been told of Gorelick's memo or her role regarding the "wall". This assertion was disputed by former senator Slade Gorton

Slade Gorton

Thomas Slade Gorton III is an American politician. A Republican, he was a U.S. senator from Washington state from 1981 to 1987, and from 1989 to 2001. He held both of the state's Senate seats in his career and was narrowly defeated for reelection twice as an incumbent: in 1986 by Brock Adams, and...

 (R-WA), a member of the 9/11 Commission, who said, "nothing Jamie Gorelick wrote had the slightest impact on the Department of Defense or its willingness or ability to share intelligence information with other intelligence agencies." Gorton also asserted that "the wall" was a long-standing policy that had resulted from the Church committee

Church Committee

The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...

 in the 1970s, and that the policy only prohibits transfer of certain information from prosecutors to the intelligence services and never prohibited information flowing in the opposite direction.

However, the "Gorelick Wall" barred anti-terror investigators from accessing the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, already in custody on an immigration violation. "During the time of Ms. Gorelick's 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh's FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore Presidential re-election campaign from foreign sources involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie

1996 United States campaign finance controversy

The 1996 United States campaign finance controversy, also known as Chinagate, was an alleged effort by the People's Republic of China to influence domestic American politics during the 1996 federal elections....

." Mr. Trie later told investigators that between 1994 and 1996 he raised some $1.2 million, much of it from foreign sources whose identities were hidden by straw donors.

Testifying before the commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft

John Ashcroft

John David Ashcroft is a United States politician who served as the 79th United States Attorney General, from 2001 until 2005, appointed by President George W. Bush. Ashcroft previously served as the 50th Governor of Missouri and a U.S...

 said, "Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review," he said. "Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission."

Lawyer for Duke University

Gorelick was added in February 2006 to Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

's defense team after the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case scandal. The University faces claims by unaccused members of the team that they "railroaded 47 Duke University students as either principals or accomplices." Gorelick and her law firm left the defense team in July of 2011 after Judge Beatty denied Duke's Motions to Dismiss and let the lawsuits proceed in April.

Charitable Work and Community Involvement

Gorelick has served on the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Urban Institute, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

External links

• Gorelick official biography from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
• Gorelick's Wall, Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal 4/15/04)