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by Albert R. Hunt
The Wall Street Journal, Jun 6,
2002
One reason, the FBI explains, that
it didn't respond last summer to an agent's warnings about suspicious
activities at flight schools by Middle Eastern men was a lack of
resources. But there were enough FBI agents to eavesdrop on New Orleans
hookers and their clients.
That certainly reflected Attorney
General John Ashcroft's priorities. This was an attorney general selected
as a cultural warrior.
Remarkably, as the Sept. 11 debate,
and the delicious dueling leaks, focuses on FBI Director Robert Mueller
and CIA Chief George Tenet, there has been little criticism of Mr.
Ashcroft. Yet on that tragic day, Mr. Mueller had been in office seven
days, his boss, the attorney general, had served more than seven months.
George Tenet spent that summer warning about the terrorism thereat; but
the attorney general considered counterterrorism a low priority.
Hindsight always is easy. There is
plenty of culpability for failing to anticipate Sept. 11, and even if
mistakes weren't made, the tragedy might have occurred anyway. But as the
nation's chief law enforcement officer, John Ashcroft's pre-Sept. 11
agenda was fighting gun control, abortion, state laws permitting assisted
suicide or medical marijuana, and going after hookers and their clients,
not terrorism.
An attorney general sets a tone;
there are many more crimes than crime-catchers in America so priorities
are important. Under Robert F. Kennedy, ambitious U.S. attorneys general
or FBI agents zeroed in on organized crime. Under Janet Reno, prosecutions
for Medicare and Medicaid fraud, a cause of hers, soared.
There is no reason to think Mr.
Ashcroft ordered federal agents in New Orleans to spend hundreds and
hundreds of hours watching and wiretapping brothels. But his underlings
clearly knew that proving that sin and sex were pervasive wouldn't
displease the boss. The endless drudgery of monitoring flight schools was
not the path to advancement in the Ashcroft criminal justice system.
What makes this more galling was
the willingness of the Bush camp to blame the Clinton administration for
the failure of American counter-terrorism: documents show that Ms. Reno,
whatever her failings, was far more committed to fighting terrorism than
Mr. Ashcroft. The attorney general's efforts to rewrite history, painting
himself as an anti-terrorist warrior from the get-go is simply
duplicitous.
The Clinton administration was late
coming to the terrorism threat. But by the second term it mattered. The
only two top officials retained by George W. Bush a year and a half ago
were CIA Director Tent and Richard Clarke, the terrorism expert at the
National Security Council.
The Justice Department sought huge
budget increases and Attorney General Reno stressed the fight against
terrorism. There were excesses, such as the establishment of an alien
terrorist removal court, to secretly evict suspected terrorists, but it
appears not to have been used.
In a May 1998 strategic directive,
Ms. Reno listed her only "tier one" priority as combating "terrorist and
criminal activities that directly threaten national or economic security."
In her memorandum to budget heads for the 2002 budget, her final one,
counter terrorism and cyber crime were accorded the top priority.
By contrast, Mr. Ashcroft cut back
on the counter-terrorism emphasis. In his directive to budget heads for
the 2003 budget, he too laid out priorities, over a dozen; none pertained
to anti-terrorism.
Although last summer the FBI
complained that it lacked sufficient resources in the war against
terrorism, the attorney general rejected the bureau's request for $57.8
million for more counter-terrorism agents, intelligence researchers and
language translators. In a letter to Budget Chief Daniels Sept. 10, the
attorney general outlined his initial requests for more funds. There are
no add-ons for counter-terrorism, but there is a reduction in grants to
state and local governments for anti-terrorism.
Yet, asked last weekend on
television about these reports, Mr. Ashcroft, who sometimes confuses
disagreement with disloyalty, claimed the charge "significantly
misrepresents" the facts. The $57.8 million rejection only was in the
give-and-take of preliminary deliberations; the actual budget involved a
"massive increase in the anti-terrorism budget."
That is a flat-out
misrepresentation. The give-and-take process inside the department had
already transpired and the boss turned down requests for more
counter-terrorism resources. When an agency head goes to the budget
director, that's the high-water mark; requests then often are pared back,
not increased.
Sure, there was a "massive
increase" in the counter-terrorism budget -- after Sept. 11. But the
Ashcroft rhetoric has been more forceful than the results. Since Sept. 11
the attorney general has thrown some 2,000 supposedly suspicious Middle
Eastern men in prison, some for months, but has not indicted even a single
one on a terrorist charge. Withholding information and secrecy are a way
of life with the attorney general.
So is arrogance. Last week when he
decided to let FBI agents roam around mosques and churches, without any
"reasonable indication" of a crime -- overturning a more than
quarter-century-old guideline promulgated by former president Jerry Ford
and his attorney general Edward Levi -- he gave congressional leaders only
two hours notice. That infuriated lawmakers like Republican House
Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, whose anti-government
conservative instincts were offended by the substance of the change.
Tough, Ashcroft defenders reply;
the attorney general is popular with the president -- one GOP activities
calls him the "conservative heartthrob" of the Bush administration -- and
with the public. To hell with the carping critics in Congress and the
press.
This tactic may work as it did
months ago when he charged critics with "giving ammunition" to America's
enemies and "aiding terrorists." But it's easy to see why John Ashcroft
resorts to such tactics; a full examination of his performance, before and
after Sept. 11, would give lots of ammunition to his critics.
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