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April 14, 2004

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Former FBI Director Blasts Ashcroft For Ignoring Terrorist Threat Warnings

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In another series of high-profile hearings before the 9/11 commission Attorney General John Ashcroft sharply countered former acting director of the FBI, Thomas Pickard who criticized his handling of terrorist threat warnings in the months before Sept. 11. We speak with David Sirota of the Center for American Progress. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: And that was Attorney General John Ashcroft. David Sirota is with us, the spokesperson for the Center for American Progress, your response.

DAVID SIROTA: I think what we’re seeing is Ashcroft in many ways has been almost completely deceptive and in many cases dishonest. He has been — was dishonest in his budget analysis. His budget analysis basically — I can’t figure out how he’s counting his numbers. The only thing I can come up with is that he’s counting everything including basic information technology, computers, not that those things are not important, but the most important counterterrorism areas is field agents and counterterrorism grants to local communities, states, and first responders. Ashcroft from the very beginning was cutting these resources when he came into office. The very first budget that was submitted within a month of taking office asked for a half billion dollar cut in monies for basic counterterrorism resources. That is the most important thing that the agents — and then in a September 10 budget submission that would have been for the next year, he also again asked for major cuts to counterterrorism resources. The other area I think is critical: he very much focused on this so-called wall between intelligence and criminal investigations. He claimed that this wall supposedly impeded his ability to prevent September 11, but what he didn’t address was the fact that — and the point raised by Attorney General, former Attorney General Janet Reno, which is the wall essentially does not prevent information from being shared in almost all of the cases that Ashcroft himself had cited. So, his, in a sense, his main argument was essentially invalid.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the memos that you have gotten from the justice department.

DAVID SIROTA: Yes, I would be happy to. On our website, www.americanprogress.org, we have uncovered a number of internal memos. I would say probably the most important one, and which Ashcroft referenced yesterday, was this so-called strategic plan of the Justice Department. Now, what this does is this basically says how the department is to be set up and what priority it is to focus on. Ashcroft came in. We have this posted on our website: he took the Clinton Administration’s strategic plan which had various priorities in counterterrorism and the like. On our website is a draft of the plan where he has highlighted what he wants to be his new goals. None of them are counterterrorism. They are primarily focused on violent crime and drug, which would be, you know, consistent with Ashcroft’s ideological thinking. He completely took the ball off of counterterrorism. And what the, the reason this is important is because when the new administration start, you have a new boss, and all of the agents are looking to their new boss in terms of what to focus on. This document proves definitively that Ashcroft wanted to focus in other places rather than on counterterrorism. And if I might, the — this is corroborated by Newsweek magazine, who reported this in their first meeting with FBI field agents, this big — they have an annual meeting with all of the FBI field agents that head the offices, Louis Freeh and Ashcroft had a meeting before that meeting to discuss what they were going to present, and Freeh said "I want to focus on counterterrorism," and Ashcroft essentially said, "We’re not focusing on counter terrorism, I want to focus on my new priorities which is violent crimes and drugs."

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