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Ashcroft cuts counter terrorism before 911 { May 21 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,719231,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,719231,00.html
Ashcroft drawn into row over September 11
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday May 21, 2002
The Guardian
The row about whether the September 11 attacks could have been averted has begun to focus on the US attorney general, who is accused of playing down the terrorist threat in the first months of the Bush administration.
Since the attacks on New York and Washington, John Ashcroft has been criticised for rounding up more than 1,000 people on suspicion of being connected to al-Qaida. Many were held for months, despite a alack of credible evidence.
He has accused his critics of undermining the fight against terrorism. But it is becoming clear that before September 11 he had little interest in counter-terrorism, and diverted resources from measures to prevent terrorism towards those aimed at more traditional targets, such as drugs and child pornography
In the late 90s the threat of a terrorist attack on US soil became a near obsession in the Clinton administration, particularly in the justice department under Janet Reno. But her successor had other ideas.
On September 10 last year, the last day of what is now seen as a bygone age of innocence, Mr Ashcroft sent a request for budget increases to the White House. It covered 68 programmes, none of them related to counter-terrorism.
He also sent a memorandum to his heads of departments, stating his seven priorities. Counter-terrorism was not on the list. He turned down an FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorist threats.
Nevertheless, he began using a chartered private jet to travel around the country, rather than take commercial airliners as Ms Reno had done. A justice department spokesman said this was done as a result of an FBI "threat assessment" on Mr Ashcroft, but insisted that the assessment was not specifically linked to al-Qaida.
But Mr Ashcroft stopped using commercial flights in July, just as the intelligence "chatter" about a possible al-Qaida strike on US soil was getting louder.
According to yesterday's edition of Newsweek, he had a showdown on counter-terrorism with the outgoing FBI director, Louis Freeh, in the spring of last year in Quantico, Virginia, at an annual meeting of special agents.
People at the meeting said the two disagreed fundamentally on their priorities.
Mr Ashcroft's agenda comprised "basically violent crime and drugs" and when Mr Freeh began to talk about his concern about the terrorist threat facing the country, "Ashcroft didn't want to hear about it".
The justice department denied that Mr Ashcroft ignored or played down the counter-terrorist effort before September 11. It pointed out that he had told a Senate committee in May that it was his "highest priority".
It is unlikely that his critics will be able to saddle him with the blame for specific errors made by the FBI in the months before the attack.
The now famous July memorandum from an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona, voicing suspicion about Middle Eastern student pilots in US flying schools did not get past the middle management at the bureau's Washington headquarters, where it was ignored.
But even since September 11 Mr Ashcroft has been accused of putting ideology before the battle against terrorism.
While seeking to limit some of the rights of those held on suspicion of terrorist connections, he prevented the FBI investigating gun-purchase records to discover if any of them had bought a weapon.
He has continued to plough resources into the drug war, stepping up raids on Californian health centres which provide the chronically ill with medicinal marijuana.
He has argued that the battle against Colombian rebels should be considered part of the broader counter-terrorist effort.
Trade Centre Rodin missing
As the dust cleared after September 11, the survival of castings of several Rodin sculptures which had been in the World Trade Centre became a symbol of hope, writes Oliver Burkeman . Now, though, the most famous one, a 70cm-high casting of the Thinker owned by the securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald, appears to have vanished.
The tale began when a firefighter picked the Thinker, one of several versions of the sculpture, out of the rubble at Ground Zero. A senior law enforcement official told the New York Times that the finder had even posed for a photograph next to it. But when questioned, the firefighter said he had not seen it since December.
Investigators believe it may have been stolen from a secure trailer used to house artworks found in the clean-up operation.
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