This story, which we noted yesterday, seems to be picking up momentum, which is gratifying.

Members of the commission that uncovered the government's failures to share intelligence among agencies before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks want to know whether U.S. defense intelligence officials knew for more than a year that four of the hijackers were part of an Al Qaeda cell but failed to tell law enforcement...

Rep. Curt Weldon said that in September 2000 [classified military intelligence unit] able Danger recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists." However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally, so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement.

This failure to share information, known colloquially as the "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement, was a major enabler of the September 11 terrorist attack. When 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick was No. 2 at the Clinton Justice Department as Deputy Attorney General, she was an architect of that wall and and urged making it "go beyond what is legally required" to prevent the "appearance" that intelligence could impair defendants' safeguards. Present-day "privacy" advocates share the same mindset of making the perception of bright line restrictions on government anti-terror operations a higher priority than catching terrorists.

It is outrageous that, even after 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7 (not to mention Bali, Beslan, Istanbul, Netanya and too many other attacks), there are still so many Americans who are totally unserious about combatting terrorists. Their preference for feel-good policies, such as prohibitions on terrorist profiling and making restrictions on intelligence-gathering more onerous than necessary will cost lives. The only question is how many.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus says "the case for data-mining just got stronger."

---