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April 11, 2004, 11:47AM Ashcroft to go before 9/11 panel this weekBy BILL LAMBRECHTCopyright 2004 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
On Tuesday, Ashcroft is expected to field questions on that recent revelation and other details of his pre-Sept. 11 approach to terrorism when he testifies in front of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. During two days of hearings, Ashcroft and former FBI director Louis Freeh are certain to field hard questions about failures leading up to Sept. 11. Former Attorney General Janet Reno, Ashcroft's immediate predecessor, and FBI director Robert Mueller also are scheduled to testify as the commission shifts its focus to law enforcement and domestic intelligence. This week's hearings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States may lack the drama of previous sessions with former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's explosive testimony and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's spirited rebuttal last week. But analysts such as Zoe Baird, a terrorism expert and president of the Markle Foundation, believe the upcoming sessions will be critical for the commission in forming recommendations on fixing the nation's intelligence apparatus. "As we go forward, we are getting to the core of the question: How are we going to use our law enforcement and intelligence capabilities to tell us what terrorists are going to do and when they are going to it? It is the key to protecting the nation," Baird said. Markle, a New York philanthropic foundation, recently brought together intelligence experts from the last four administrations to study terrorism. The Sept. 11 commission this week may consider a key Markle recommendation: a so-called "virtual reorganization of government" to enable immediate sharing of information in many agencies. In its report this summer, the commission may even recommend a new government entity altogether, one similar to Britain's MI-5 domestic spy agency. The panel will be looking ahead, but it also will be examining events leading up to Sept. 11, particularly failures within the Justice Department. Previous testimony, both public and private, has added to evidence that Ashcroft and the FBI did not give terrorism a priority before the Sept. 11 attacks. Among those scheduled to appear before the commission this week is Thomas Pickard, the FBI acting director in the summer of 2001, who has criticized what he viewed as Ashcroft's lack of attention to terrorism. Last week, Sept. 11 commission member Jamie Gorelick asserted that there had been no evidence of heightened anti-terrorism efforts in Ashcroft's office after the president received a classified memo from the CIA on Aug. 6, 2001, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." In an earlier session, commission member Richard Ben-Veniste remarked, "Ironically, on September 10th, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft axed $58 million from the FBI's counterterrorism budget." Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo promised that Ashcroft will vigorously defend himself on Tuesday. Corallo disputed the recent comments from commission members, remarking that both Ben-Veniste and Gorelick are Democratic partisans. He asserted that Ashcroft had not been briefed on the August warnings and therefore could not have been expected to press the FBI into additional precautions. Ashcroft's FBI budget-trimming, Corallo argued, amounted to the typical give-and-take in the Washington budget process when agencies submit inflated requests. He said the $58 million was for several purposes, not just counterterrorism. "The fact is, Attorney General Ashcroft took terrorism very seriously," Corallo said. Immediately after Sept. 11, Ashcroft, a former Missouri senator and governor, paid attention to few matters other than terrorism. He moved for several weeks into FBI offices across the street from his own and began pushing Congress for broader anti-terrorism powers. He championed the controversial Patriot Act to expand the government's reach into private information and announced what he called a wartime reorganization of the Justice Department.
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