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No excuses from ashcroft { June 6 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usash063319981jun06,0,73681.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-printhttp://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usash063319981jun06,0,73681.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print
No Excuses From Ashcroft
Fields questions on post-9/11 detainees
By Tom Brune
WASHINGTON BUREAU
June 6, 2003
Washington - In a rare appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday deflected his congressional critics and shrugged off an internal report critical of the treatment of detainees in the Sept. 11 terror probe.
Despite nearly five hours of testimony, Ashcroft added little to the Justice Department's response to questions about its use of new anti-terrorism laws or to the stinging 198-page report issued Monday by the department's inspector general.
Instead, he invoked the "ideological war" between the United States and terrorists, claimed progress and success in that war, and dismissed his critics while asking for three new anti-terrorism measures.
And in his first public comment on the detainee report, Ashcroft ceded no ground, repeating his spokeswoman's line that "we make no apologies" and that the measures taken were necessary and legal.
Democrats on the committee posed a variety of questions challenging the Patriot Act and the detainee report but they failed to pin down Ashcroft, who responded with often lengthy answers.
He was aided by the gavel of committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who strictly enforced each committee member's five-minute limit for questions, cutting off some in midsentence.
The tone of the hearing was set when Sensenbrenner ended a line of questioning by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) about the links between the Sept. 11 attacks and the 515 detainees who were deported.
Waters asked, "Mr. Attorney General, how many of the 515 individuals ..."
Sensenbrenner broke in to say her time had expired.
Walters continued, "... were linked to September 11th?"
Sensenbrenner allowed Ashcroft to answer the question.
Ashcroft said that "in deference to other members of the committee" he would not "give the complete answer." Then he said that all detainees arrested and held were here illegally. Department policy, "for which we do not apologize," he said, was that "before we would release them ... we wanted to have them cleared."
Those FBI clearances took on average nearly three months, the report found, after immigration officials gave deportation or voluntary departure orders, leaving the detainees, who had no ties to terrorism, in secret and often harsh jail conditions.
Led by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a longtime Ashcroft critic and the committee's ranking minority member, Democrats are looking ahead to a series of future oversight hearings that will examine the Justice Department and its anti-terrorism measures, Democratic aides said. Notably, Conyers did not question the attorney general yesterday.
Ashcroft did note that he would not tolerate abuse in the jails, another allegation of the report, and said Justice officials would continue to investigate four of 18 abuse cases brought to their attention. The Civil Rights Division, he said, declined prosecution in the other 14 cases for lack of evidence.
The attorney general was appearing before the committee for the first time in 20 months, when in September 2001 he testified on the legislation that would become the Patriot Act.
But Sensenbrenner and Conyers said Ashcroft had agreed to more frequent oversight hearings for the detainee review and Patriot Act provisions that will expire in 2005.
"It has been my view and the chairman's that we could have a great little blast here today, but that it would be far more purposeful if we were to have several meetings in which we break down the subject matter," Conyers said.
Among the issues that likely will be taken up will be Ashcroft's three new measures: clarifying the definition of "material support" for terrorism; toughening penalties for terrorist acts to include the death penalty and life sentences; and to permit pretrial detention of suspects in terrorism prosecutions.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
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