Consummate Prick
Has there ever been a more blatantly partisan Attorney General than the Crisco Kid? This testimony today was contemptuous, dishonest and disturbingly inappropriate. In any other administration someone who acted out as he did today would be fired:
Attorney General John Ashcroft strongly defended the Bush administration and himself today before the 9/11 commission, laying the blame for intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks squarely on the presidency of Bill Clinton.
Mr. Ashcroft said Al Qaeda was able to plan and carry out the attacks that killed some 3,000 people in large part because of policies of the Clinton administration and its deliberate neglect of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s computer technology.
[…]
Mr. Ashcroft said that to the contrary, he personally went to the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on March 7, 2001, and urged her to scuttle what he characterized as an ineffective policy of the Clinton administration specifying that Mr. bin Laden had to be captured, and only in a way that lawyers would approve.
“Even if they could have penetrated bin Laden’s training camp, they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture,” Mr. Ashcroft said sarcastically.
Mr. Ashcroft said that he wanted “decisive, lethal action” and had told Ms. Rice, “We should find and kill bin Laden.”
The attorney general sounded almost contemptuous as he spoke of a “legal wall” put into effect in 1995 to separate criminal investigators from intelligence agents in an effort to safeguard individual rights.
I’m afraid that Mr Ashcroft has a strange understanding of his job description. It was not his responsibility to tell the administration that he “wanted decisive, lethal action” overseas. It was his responsibility to deal with terrorism threats in the United States, a responsibility he failed miserably to meet.
I believe that he lied outright today when he denied (under oath) that he told Picker that he didn’t want to hear about terrorism anymore.
BEN-VENISTE: And according to the statement that our staff took from you, you said that you would start each meeting discussing either counterterrorism or counterintelligence. At the same time the threat level was going up and was very high. Mr. Watson had come to you and said that the CIA was very concerned that there would be an attack. You said that you told the attorney general this fact repeatedly in these meetings. Is that correct?
PICKARD: I told him at least on two occasions.
BEN-VENISTE: And you told the staff according to this statement that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore. Is that correct?
PICKARD: That is correct.
“First of all, Acting Director Pickard and I had more than two meetings,” Mr. Ashcroft said evenly. “We had regular meetings.”
And far from turning away from briefings on terrorism, Mr. Ashcroft said, “I care greatly about the safety and security of the American people and was very interested in terrorism, and specifically interrogated him about threats to the American people, and domestic threats in particular.”
All of his actions indicate that he didn’t want to hear about terrorism. I’ll be expecting some harsh words from Senator Catkiller on the floor of the Senate tomorrow. Words like perjury and “letter of resignation.”
Yeah, I know. And people in hell want icewater.