Back on May 21, 2004 in a column “Send out the Clowns,” I wrote about the. 9/11 Commission, warning that “It’s time to shut this farce down and send its members back into their well-earned obscurity.”

Recent events proved I was right about this sorry collection of showboating has-beens who had just devoted most of their hearings in New York to attacking such 9/11 heroes as Rudy Giuliani and his police and fire commissioners.

I specifically mentioned Democrat Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, who I wrote should have been a witness forced to explain how as former Attorney General Janet Reno’s deputy she had helped cripple the intelligence community, instead of a being a commission member.

With the recent exposure of the Clinton administration’s refusal to accept and act on information concerning 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and three of his fellow hijackers – information that if acted upon might well have prevented 9/11 and saved 3000 innocent lives lost in that outrage – the recent disgraceful performance of the 9/11 Commission is plain for all to see.

Now a memo written long before 9/11 by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, a Clinton appointee, has been obtained by the New York Post. In it White pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall the Post noted went beyond legal requirements.

According to the Post’s Washington Bureau Chief Deborah Orin, White’s team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

“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. “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.”

The memo was ignored. Orin then turns her keen eye on the 9/11 Commission, which was charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11 and got White’s stunning memo and several related documents – “and deep-sixed all of them.

“The commission’s report skips lightly over the wall in three brief pages (out of 567). It makes no mention at all of White’s passionate and prescient warnings. Yet warnings that went ignored are just what the commission was supposed to examine.”

Concluded Orin, “So it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the commission ignored White’s memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick.”

This whole matter unearthed by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., is a bombshell but you’d never know it from reading the mainstream media – or rather not reading it since the mainstream media is all but ignoring it, or even worse, distorting the facts.

According to Rep. Weldon members of Able Danger, a special intelligence investigative group, were kept out of the 9/11 Commission investigation and ignored in their final report. A member of the group told the Washington Times that despite having briefed commission staff members on two occasions about the Mohamed Atta-led terrorist cell and telling them of a lockdown of information between the Defense Department and the FBI, they were ignored.

Accusations that commission staffers were briefed on the Able Danger operation but ignored the information in the final report came from Rep. Weldon, who said potential political fallout was one reason he was given for the information not being turned over to the FBI.

“How could a top-secret operation against al-Qaeda not be mentioned in the 9/11 document?” Weldon said. “It’s outrageous. It looks like someone at the staff level decided not to pursue that information.”

This is a major scandal. Had it occurred under the Bush administration the media would be in an uproar and Democrats would be screaming for the president’s scalp. But since it happened because the Clinton administration failed to act, the media is all but ignoring it. I guess it doesn’t bother the media that 3000 innocent people died as a result of the Clinton administration’s failures. Instead they prefer to concentrate on the ranting and ravings of poor Cindy Sheehan.

Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s new book “Twice Adopted”. Order autographed books at www.reagan.com. Email Comments to mereagan@hotmail.com .