The New York Times is reporting the Justice Department made efforts Monday to persuade the 9/11 commission to rewrite a new report that portrays Attorney General John Ashcroft as being uninterested in counterterrorism issues in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks. F.B.I.'s former counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, reportedly told the commission that he fell off his chair when he learned that Ashcroft had failed to list combating terrorism as one of the department's priorities in a March 2001 department-wide memo. Ashcroft, is scheduled to testify before the commission Tuesday afternoon. The 9/11 commission is also expected to issue a report criticizing the FBI for missing a series of clues that suggested Al Qaeda was preparing an attack within U.S. borders.