April 13, 2004

CAPITOL HILL (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said the nation's intelligence community was "blinded" by government restrictions before 9/11.

Ashcroft told the 9/11 commission that "the single greatest structural cause" of the attacks was a "wall" separating criminal investigators from intelligence agents.

Ashcroft said previous administrations had spent nearly a decade essentially hampering efforts in the field to find terrorists. He says "Draconian restrictions" and "flawed legal reasoning" simply didn't allow intelligence agencies to connect the dots that may have prevented an attack.

Ashcroft said when he took office, there was a plan in place to capture Osama bin Laden, but not to kill him. He says he moved quickly to push for a plan that would allow for killing the al-Qaida chief.

Also Tuesday, a former head of counter-terrorism at the CIA said the spy agency was low on resources before 9/11.

In testimony to the panel, Cofer Black said, "We didn't have enough people to do the job and we didn't have enough money by magnitudes."

Black also said when the money runs out, then people die. But he bitingly added, "When people die, you get more money."

Former acting FBI director Thomas Pickard testified that federal officials didn't have "great sources" when it came to finding out more about the al-Qaida threat.

And according to Janet Reno in Tuesday testimony, "The right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing" in the FBI. The former attorney general used those words to describe the agency's difficulty in handling all of the information it collected on intelligence and criminal matters.

In a report released by the panel Tuesday, Reno is quoted as saying that the FBI never seemed to have enough resources, but that former Director Louis Freeh didn't seem willing to shift resources to terrorism from other areas.

Freeh, who also testified Tuesday, said Congress prevented permanent shifts.

But Reno said she told him that if they needed to re-program, then "Let's do it."

The commission said Tuesday the FBI failed miserably, over the course of several years, to recognize and respond to that threat.

It said that when 9/11 arrived, the FBI had only a "limited" ability to collect intelligence and to share information, both within and outside the agency. And it says the bureau had "inadequate resources."

However, Freeh, said the agency had a "very effective" counter-terrorism program, considering the resources that were available.

Also in the panel's statement released Tuesday is the detail that one day before 9/11 Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected an FBI appeal for more money for counter-terrorism.

The statement says that on September 10, 2001, Ashcroft turned down a request that had been made earlier by the acting FBI director, Thomas Pickard. The FBI official had wanted more counter-terrorism spending in a budget that already boosted FBI spending by eight percent.

Four months earlier, Ashcroft told a Senate panel that the Justice Department had "no higher priority" than protecting Americans from terrorism.

The decision to reject the FBI request came despite months of increased concern that al-Qaida might be preparing a major attack against the U.S.

Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.