Ashcroft now under scrutiny

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Registered: 03-23-2003
Ashcroft now under scrutiny
Tue, 04-13-2004 - 11:21am
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/168848_attacks13.html

Ashcroft now under scrutiny

Report allegedly calls him 'largely uninterested' in terrorism issues


Tuesday, April 13, 2004


By PHILIP SHENON
THE NEW YORK TIMES


WASHINGTON -- Draft reports by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks portray Attorney General John Ashcroft as largely uninterested in counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11 despite intelligence warnings that summer that al-Qaida was planning a large, perhaps catastrophic terrorist attack, according to panel officials and others with access to the reports.


They said the draft reports, which are expected to be completed and made public during two days of hearings by the commission this week, show that FBI officials were alarmed throughout 2001 by what they perceived as Ashcroft's lack of interest in terrorism issues and his decision in August 2001 to turn down the bureau's request for a large expansion of its counterterrorism programs.


The draft reports, they said, quote the FBI's former counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying that he "fell off my chair" when he learned that Ashcroft had failed to list combating terrorism as one of the department's priorities in a March 2001 departmentwide memo.


They said the reports will also quote from internal memos by Thomas Pickard, acting director of the FBI in the summer of 2001, in which Pickard described his frustration with Ashcroft and what he saw as the attorney general's lack of interest in the issue of how the bureau was investigating terrorism suspects in the United States.


Ashcroft is scheduled to testify before the commission today, as it begins a new two-day hearing. Also scheduled to testify are former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General Janet Reno, Pickard, and former CIA counterterrorism center Director Cofer Black.


Commission officials said that the Justice Department, which was provided with a draft copy of the report, had mounted an aggressive, last-minute effort yesterday to persuade the commission to rewrite the parts of the report dealing with Ashcroft, describing them as one-sided and unfair to the attorney general.


Aides to Ashcroft say he will tell the panel that he was briefed throughout the year on terrorist threats and was never informed -- by either the FBI or CIA -- that he needed to take special action, since intelligence reports suggested that any attack would be overseas.


"He asked over and over again if there was any evidence of a domestic threat, and he was told over and over again that there was no evidence of one," said Mark Corallo, Ashcroft's spokesman.


Corallo said that Ashcroft had not seen a top-secret intelligence briefing report that was presented to President Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, which referred to an active presence of al-Qaida in the United States. But Corallo said that the memorandum would not have made a difference, since it listed "no specific threats" that needed to be addressed.


Commission officials said Ashcroft may also be asked about why he stopped flying commercially on government business in the summer of 2001 -- the department has said the move was requested by the FBI in response to threats to Ashcroft's safety unrelated to al-Qaida -- and his extensive use thereafter of a luxurious FBI jet, a $40 million Gulfstream 5.


The plane had been purchased for use in special investigations and for the transport of terrorists and other dangerous suspects.


Current and former FBI officials have told the commission that they were infuriated by Ashcroft's use of the jet and that it was seen as emblematic of his detachment from the needs of investigators.


Corallo said Ashcroft used the plane only when it was not needed for other business by the FBI, which is part of the Justice Department.


Law enforcement officials say the hearings this week by the commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, are expected to produce an intense round of finger-pointing between current and former FBI and Justice Department officials.


Panel officials said that the commission's interim reports this week, which will form part of its final report this summer, will also offer a harsh assessment of the FBI, saying that the bureau bungled its handling of a series of clues throughout 2001 that suggested that al-Qaida might be preparing for an attack within U.S. borders.


But while the FBI's failures before Sept. 11 are well-documented, especially the bureau's failure to follow up on warnings from agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis about their suspicions that Islamic extremists were training at American flight schools, Ashcroft's actions before Sept. 11 have not faced this sort of scrutiny before.


Ashcroft has long been a lightning rod for criticism from Bush's critics, especially congressional Democrats and civil liberties advocates who say that the former Republican senator from Missouri has used the Sept. 11 attacks as a vehicle for a severe clampdown on personal liberties and the rights of foreign immigrants.


Commission officials say that there is irony in the panel's findings that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft may have been too timid about seeking electronic surveillance of terror suspects.


They said their investigation suggested that until the terror attacks, Ashcroft had resisted signing emergency warrants that would have allowed eavesdropping in terrorism investigations, apparently because he had only a rudimentary knowledge of how the warrants process worked.


Former FBI Director Freeh, in an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, said the FBI "relentlessly did its job pursuing terrorists" before the attacks but was hampered by lack of resources and political will.


Commission members, who last week heard National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice defend the Bush administration's pre-Sept. 11 actions, are expected to ask Freeh and the others why more wasn't done.


The hearing comes on the heels of the weekend release of the previously classified Aug. 6, 2001, president's daily brief, or PDB -- that warned al-Qaida was operating in the United States and might be looking to hijack planes.


Bush, speaking yesterday with reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, repeated his view that the memo was "kind of a history" of Osama bin Laden's intentions but contained no warning that "something is about to happen in America."


Still, citing statements by Rice, Bush said: "Now may be the time to revamp and reform our intelligence services."


BUSH ADDRESSES THE NATION

President Bush will work to defuse two issues in a prime-time news conference today: rising casualties in Iraq and his response in 2001 to a terrorism warning the White House had in hand before the Sept. 11 attacks.


The news conference is the 12th of his presidency, but only his third televised in prime evening viewing hours.


KOMO/4, KING/5, KIRO/7 and KCPQ/13 will carry the news conference live beginning at 5:30 p.m.


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