Glenn Reynolds – the guy who runs Instapundit, the most popular conservative blog – has responded to your emails demanding he correct the record about Jamie Gorelick’s 1995 memo.

Essentially, Glenn’s position is that he is under no obligation to tell his readers the truth because he didn’t write the post. (It was written by a woman named Ann Althouse, who was filing in for him.)

Glenn also argues that, as it relates to Gorelick, he’s “dropping the ball in the ‘continual smear’ department.”

I guess he has forgotten about the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 posts he’s written attacking Jamie Gorelick.

But, as Glenn notes, all these posts are more than a year old, so they don’t count. Instamorals.

- the CNN special into the “intelligence meltdown” prior to the Iraq war. In the program, a “former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was ‘the lowest point’ in his life.”

Earlier today, we noted that several right wing bloggers – including the National Review’s John Podhoretz – were lying about the impact of a 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick. Podhoretz and others claimed the memo prevented the Department of Defense from sharing information about Mohammed Atta and other terrorists with the FBI. In fact, the Gorelick memo dealt exclusively with the sharing of information between the FBI and the criminal division of the Justice Department.

Caught in a lie this morning, Podhoretz lied again this afternoon. Responding to ThinkProgress readers, Podhoretz tries to claim his story was — and has always been — that the Gorelick’s memo didn’t prevent the information from being shared but was “important” and “reflective of a mindset of consensus”:

Here’s what I think, and what I have said for more than a week now: The 1981 executive order governing intelligence matters specifically gives military intelligence a right to share information with the FBI. But when the deputy attorney general, in 1995, writes a memo insisting that when it comes to sharing intelligence, it is important to go ‘beyond the letter of the law” — and she is the same person who was the general counsel at the Pentagon before that — said memo indicates a mindset in the government about the dangers and inherent incorrectness about the sharing of intelligence information that was very dangerous. That’s what 9/11 proved in part, and why a lot of us think Gorelick’s “wall” memo was important and reflective of a mindset consensus.

First, that’s not what Podhoretz has been saying for a week. Last Friday Podhoretz said the information wasn’t shared between the DoD and the FBI “solely” because the Gorelick memo raised the “intelligence wall”:

I don’t really understand all of it, but the evidence suggests that the Able Danger information could and should have been shared with the FBI and wasn’t — solely owing to the “raising” of the intelligence wall that was done by Jamie Gorelick herself in 1995.

But the second version of Podhoretz’s claim is equally ridiculous, to the extent it’s even comprehensible. This was a classified Justice Department memo. It’s highly unlikely that it was seen by anyone in the Department of Defense at all, much less the people involved in the Able Danger program.

For good measure Podhoretz throws in an insult to Think Progress readers:

Don’t read anything. Just continue to serve as an e-mail robot. It’s probably the best you guys can do.

E-mail robots, activate! Contact Podhoretz at jpod@sprynet.com and ask him a simple question: Do you stand by your statement that the Gorelick memo prevented the Able Danger information from being shared or not?

over an 8-year term. 336 days. He accomplished the feat in an amazing four-and-a-half years.

Why doesn’t President Bush feel obligated to meet with Cindy Sheehan during his vacation?

Remember this statement by his mother, Barbara Bush, on Good Morning America in March 2003:

Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer claims a “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.” Shaffer says those efforts were blocked by military lawyers.

It’s uncertain whether any of this actually happened. But the right-wing has used it as an excuse to smear former Deputy Attorney General (and 9/11 Commissioner) Jamie Gorelick. People like Rush Limbaugh and columnist Deborah Orin of the New York Post claim that the information on Atta couldn’t be shared with the FBI because of a 1995 memo written by Gorelick.

As Media Matters notes, this is totally false. Shaffer’s story, if it’s true, involved communications between the Department of Defense and the FBI. Gorelick’s 1995 memo was only about communications between the FBI and the criminal division of the Justice Department. (It also didn’t create a wall between the FBI and the Justice Department but that’s another story.) Whatever problems Shaffer had trying to communicate with the FBI it had absolutely nothing to do with Gorelick.

That hasn’t stopped virtually every major right-wing blogger from repeating the lie. Contact them and demand they correct the record. (Contact info in the expanded post.)

Michelle Malkin: malkin@comcast.net
Captain’s Quarters: captain@captainsquartersblog.com
National Review, John Podhoretz: jpod@sprynet.com
Instapundit: pundit@instapundit.com

UPDATE: The post smearing Gorelick which was posted on Instapundit.com was written by a woman named Ann Althouse, who was substitute blogging that week. The email address above reaches Glenn Reynolds, who reguarly posts to the site. Glenn should get the emails too, because he needs to issue a correction to his readers. But some of Glenn’s fans think you should contact Ann directly. If you’d like to do so, she can be reached at althouse@wisc.edu.