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Tue. Apr 13, 2004

Ashcroft's Glass House

I think in some ways it’s a bit counterproductive to nitpick every single piece of public testimony, before the 9/11 Commission can weave it all together in their final report. Not that it hasn’t become a National Pasttime. However, the arrogance of John Ashcroft’s testimony really struck a nerve with me.

From the transcript: “But the simple fact of Sept. 11 is this: we did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies.”

Furthermore, when asked about the budget priorities of the Justice Department, he said, “Well, first of all, it’s important to note that the budget under which we were operating on September 11th was a budget established by the prior administration.”

The clear implication is, “not my fault, it was the Clinton administration.” But men in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones (emphasis mine): “On September 10 last year, the last day of what is now seen as a bygone age of innocence, Mr Ashcroft sent a request for budget increases to the White House. It covered 68 programmes, none of them related to counter-terrorism.”

“He also sent a memorandum to his heads of departments, stating his seven priorities. Counter-terrorism was not on the list. He turned down an FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorist threats.”

On September 10th. That report is from two years ago, but if you don’t trust The Guardian, the same info was right there in the commission’s opening statement Tuesday:

On May 9, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft testified at a hearing on U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. He testified that the Justice Department had no higher priority than to protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

On May 10, the department issued guidance for developing the fiscal year 2003 budget that made reducing the incidence of gun violence and reducing the trafficking of illegal drugs priority objectives.

[The head of the Counterterrorism Division, Dale] Watson told us that he almost fell out of his chair when he saw the memo because it made no mention of counterterrorism.

The department prepared a budget for fiscal year 2003 that did not increase counterterrorism funding over its pending proposal for fiscal year 2002. It did include an enhancement for the FBI’s information technology program, intended to support the collection, analysis and rapid dissemination of information pertinent to FBI investigations.

Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard told us he made an appeal to Attorney General Ashcroft for further counterterrorism enhancements not included in this budget proposal. On September 10th, the attorney general rejected that appeal.

On September 10th. The day before the attack, Ashcroft was as “blinded” as anyone in the past decade. His budget priorities were just as skewed away from the terrorist threat as his predecessor, despite the sworn testimony he gave Tuesday.

Therefore, his piety and passing of the buck before the commission left me completely disgusted. I cannot think of a single public official for whom I have less respect, or more contempt.

If some people think Richard Clarke went too far by issuing an apology, at the other end of the spectrum we find John Ashcroft, a stark expression of the cowardly flip side of that same coin; “it wasn’t me, it was those Bad Democrats before me.”