The Able Danger story is developing.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned...

He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.

There you have it: privacy concerns trumped security concerns and 3,000 people paid for it with their lives. And it was not to defend cherished rights or even to adhere to bad laws. The Clinton administration explicitly made it unduly difficult for intelligence gatherers to share information with law enforcers. This is because The Wall that the Clinton Justice Department erected was higher than the law required, just to keep up "appearances."

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, a Clinton appointee who won convictions against Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who plotted to bomb landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, warned the Clinton adminisration:

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities," wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

"The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism...can have deadly results."

She added: "We must face the reality that the way we are proceeding now is inherently and in actuality very dangerous."

Remember, this was a Clinton appointee! And to whom did this memo go? Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, Clinton's #2 at Justice and, incredibly, a member of the September 11 commission - a very conflicted member.

The Clinton administration clearly had a preference for inhibiting government intrusiveness in our lives, if not in terms of economics or regulations then in terms of national security (perhaps especially so). They'll tell us from Washington how much water a toilet can flush and keep us on their dole during retirement, but dammit, they draw the line at investigating suspected terrorists. As this story develops, its impact on Hillary Clinton's political ambitions will be interesting to watch.

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