If reports are true that the Pentagon identified lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta a year before the attack, then suddenly it was not an intelligence failure but a bureaucratic one. If that is the case, why did the September 11 commission come to the wrong conclusion? Was it ineptitude, or was it something worse? Was the commission trying to protect one of its own, Jamie Gorelick, who prioritized the "appearance" of improper information sharing above effective terror interdiction?

...elite military spies pinpointed Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as a terror cell more than a year before 9/11 — but were barred from alerting lawmen to try to lock them up.

A prime reason why that warning never came is that Gorelick — as top deputy to then-Attorney General Janet Reno — issued a 1995 order creating a "wall" that blocked intelligence on terrorists from being shared with law enforcement.

And this is not a matter of 20/20 hindsight, because 9/11 commission member Gorelick was warned.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who headed up key terror probes...— herself a Clinton appointee — wrote directly to Reno that the wall was a big mistake.

"It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney's Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required," White wrote on June 13, 1995.

But the commission either covered this up or was too incompetent to think this was important.

That memo surfaced during the 9/11 hearings. But The Post has learned that White was so upset that she bitterly protested with another memo — a scathing one — after Reno and Gorelick refused to tear down the wall...

The 9/11 Commission got that White memo, The Post was told — but omitted any mention of it from its much-publicized report. Nor does the report include the transcript of its staff interview with White.

Why did the commission hide this part of the story?

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