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Impeach George Bush
Ashcroft at Ground Zero
US Attorney General John Ashcroft came under scrutiny at the 9/11 Commission.And here we thought he was ineffectual. Mais no! Ashcroft can dish the dirt with the best of them!
Source: The TIP, 2004-04-16
Candidate: Big Government
He blew it last week. When he wasn't on the defensive, Ashcroft was pointing at his predecessors. And when that didn't work, he released his "dogs" to attack a member of the Commission, calling for her resignation.
Ashcroft was called to testify before the 9/11 Commission on Tuesday, April 13, in connection with his role as Attorney General from January 20, 2001 through and following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Typical of the entire Bush Administration, Ashcroft took no responsibility for what he did or what he knew for the eight months before the attacks. Instead, he said it was "The refusal of the FBI and the CIA to work together during the Clinton administration" for the failure to detect the plot for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
We've all gotten used to this tactic and few of us actually buy it anymore. But the press rarely calls these guys on their finger-pointing and the rest of us just say "yeah, sure, whatever" and move on.
But Ashcroft made it personal. Maybe because he is particularly incompetant and what he knew and what he did was so unfailingly wrong, but when confronted with the facts of his service, Ashcroft attacked.
Ashcroft said he moved quickly once he was in office to overturn a “failed policy” that allowed
U.S. agents to capture terrorist leader Osama bin Laden but not to assassinate him. He testified that he specifically told President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that “we should find and kill bin Laden.” He said Rice gave the assignment to the CIA.
Handily declaring "I's not my job, Mon" just won't work, though. In fact, a parade of Clinton and Bush Administration witnesses placed Ashcroft at the center of the problem, impeding all agencies of the government from doing their jobs.
s• Robert Mueller• George Tenet• John Pistole• Patrick Hughes• John Brennan• James Pavitt• John Ashcroft• Thomas Pickard• J. Cofer Black• Janet Reno• Louis Freeh• Condoleezza Rice• George Tenet• Sandy Berger• Richard Clarke• Richard Armitage• Colin PowellFormer Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard and Cofer Black, former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, also complained about inadequate funding and legal straitjackets before Sept. 11, echoing Freeh’s testimony that officials did the best they could under the circumstances.
What were the circumstances?
According to Thomas Pickard. A second staff report quoted Pickard as saying Ashcroft told him in the summer of 2001 that “he did not want to hear” additional information about possible attacks, an allegation he repeated in his public testimony Tuesday.
But Ashcrof said that for 10 years before Sept. 11, “a snarled web of requirements, restrictions and regulations ... prevented decisive action by our men and women in the field.”
“Government erected this wall,” he said. “Government buttressed this wall. And before Sept. 11, government was blinded by this wall.”
Ashcroft was speaking specifically of former Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick who, in 1995, authored a memo outlining the new rules dictated by the Clinton administration to separate criminal investigations from intelligence gathering and saying that they "go beyond what is legally required." The Gorelick rules were meant to ensure that "no 'proactive' investigative efforts or technical coverages" of terrorist suspects or defendants be carried out on U.S. soil without the knowledge of the Justice Department.
Gorelick's memo does not prevent any investigations in the future, it only says that in cases of future investigatiove efforts, which primarily focus on past criminal conduct, with the exception of the obstruction investigation..."If in the future, the criminal investigations develop information requiring "pro-active" efforts or technical coverages, the United States Attorneys Office and the criminal agents will consult with the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and the FCI agents before undertaking such efforts, absent exigent circumstances, in order to determine the impact, if any, on the FCI investigation.
In other words, Gorelick recommends that investigators communicate with prosecutors regarding orders to forestall a conflict that might endanger the successful prosecution of ongoing cases. And it was the responsibility of the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, to authorize the investigations.
Ashcroft said the Gorelick rules were devastating, and hampered the ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to communicate the identify of two of the 9/11 hijackers to law-enforcement agencies, even after they had entered the United States. That failure specifically contributed to 9/11, he said. But it was his responsibility to oversee the rules and he dropped the ball.
The next day, Ashcroft enlisted help from his friend House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)to call for Gorelick's resignation Wednesday, saying that she must recuse herself because her potential role in the failures that led to the terrorist attacks is now the subject of investigation. "Thus, I believe the commission's work and independence will be fatally damaged by the continued participation of Ms. Gorelick as a commissioner. Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that Ms. Gorelick should resign from this commission."
However, the really telling accusation against Gorelick came when it was revealed she contributed $20,000 to Democratic causes and candidates including John Kerry. That's what Ashcroft was really after - Democratic partisans.
So, back to the subject at hand...What exactly did Ashcroft know and what did he do?
Ashcroft said he had completed a "thorough review" of the counterterrorism actions taken before 9/11. He said it revealed "no covert action program to kill bin Laden."
Instead, agents and operatives were "crippled by a snarled web of requirements, restrictions and regulations that prevented decisive action," Ashcroft testified, adding that even "if they could have penetrated bin Laden's training camp, they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture."
Ashcroft testified that little more than a month after assuming office he told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that he wanted to "fix covert authorities to allow for decisive, lethal action" against bin Laden.
But under questioning, Ashcroft couldn't point to anything he did to pursue or enact such a plan after his meeting with Rice.
He said he believed Tenet was handling it as part of a broader review.
And two commissioners, Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste and Republican Fred Fielding, suggested that the panel recently received a previously undisclosed--and highly classified--document showing that Clinton may have authorized just such a strike.
Ashcroft said he was unaware of it. And despite what he called his own thorough review, Ashcroft acknowledged under questioning from Fielding that he couldn't recall what documents he was given, where they came from or whether his staff briefed him on the issue.
What else did he know?
—May 1998 FBI issues a five-year strategic plan making national and economic security, including counterterrorism, its top priority for the first time in FBI history.
—1998-2001 FBI's counterterrorism spending remains constant after the bureau's counterterrorism budget tripled in the mid-1990s.
—1999 Counterterrorism and counterintelligence divisions created to focus FBI on national security missions.
—2000 External review of the FBI finds that twice as many agents are devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism.
—May 10, 2001 Justice Department identifies reducing gun violence and reducing drug trafficking as top priorities for the 2003 budget. The commission's staff reports that FBI counterterrorism head Dale Watson "almost fell out of his chair when he saw the memo because it made no mention of counterterrorism."
—A July 2001 memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix warned that Islamic extremists might be training at flight schools and urged a nationwide probe.
—The August 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui on immigration charges in Minneapolis, where his behavior at a flight training school had aroused suspicions. He remains the only person charged in the U.S. in connection with the attacks.
—Information that al-Qaida members had traveled freely to and from the U.S. for years and maintained a support network here.
—Signs of surveillance directed against federal buildings in New York and information from Ahmed Ressam, awaiting sentencing in a failed 1999 plot to bomb Los Angeles' airport, that at least one senior al-Qaida lieutenant encouraged the 9/11 plan.
—CIA information in late August 2001 that two of the soon-to-be hijackers had entered the U.S. and lived for a time in San Diego.
— An FBI conclusion of “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings,” and intelligence indicating al-Qaida’s interest in using hijackings to free jailed comrades.
Ashcroft's budget for fiscal year 2003 "did not increase counterterrorism funding over its pending proposal for fiscal year 2002." And Ashcroft turned down an appeal from Pickard for more funding--an appeal that Ashcroft formally rejected on Sept. 10, 2001, admittedly an unfortunate coincidence.
Ashcroft fiercely defended his performance since taking office, declaring: “Had I known a terrorist attack on the United States was imminent in 2001, I would have unloaded our full arsenal of weaponry against it, despite the inevitable criticism. ... Every tough tactic we have deployed since the attacks would have been deployed before the attacks.” Question is, why didn't he know? The FBI knew. The CIA knew.
Before the attacks, Ashcroft once testified that the Justice Department “had no higher priority” than preventing domestic terrorism, but the commission staff statement quoted a former FBI counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying he “almost fell out of his chair” when he saw a May 10, 2001, budget memo from Ashcroft listing seven priorities, including illegal drugs and gun violence, but not terrorism.
In his testimony, Freeh cited the warning, which has become known as the “Phoenix memo,” as one that could "not easily" be turned into a national probe because of legal restraints on running surveillance on tens of thousands of foreign students across the country.
Ashcroft testified that the memo got lost in the shuffle because of what he called the FBI’s “antique” computer technology and information management systems. That, too, was the fault of the Clinton administration, he said. “The bureau essentially had 42 separate information systems, none of which were connected. Agents lacked even the most basic Internet technology,” he charged.
With this knowledge in hand, what did Ashcroft do? Apparently, not much.
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