NYT, page one: Ashcroft, Freeh, and 9/11 (new info)

[DeepModem Mom]

The New York Times front-pages this article today:

9/11 Panel Plans Hard Questions for the F.B.I. and Justice Dept.
By PHILIP SHENON

Published: April 6, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 5 — Current and former leaders of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are expected to come under criticism from the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at public hearings next week, with Attorney General John Ashcroft and Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, being called to account for their agencies' failures before the attacks, panel officials say....

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/06/politics/06PANE.html


Within the article is some interesting information:

Ashcroft had little interest in terrorism, and rejected calls for more funding. If I read correctly, he went along with a "White House" plan to cut an emergency request AFTER 9/11:

"Commission officials said their evidence showed that Mr. Ashcroft had taken little interest in counterterrorism before Sept. 11 and, days before the attacks, had rejected pleas from senior F.B.I. officials for more money for counterterrorism even as intelligence agencies warned of an imminent, possibly catastrophic, terrorist attack.

They said the commission may make public a series of internal memorandums written by Thomas J. Pickard, who was the F.B.I. acting director in the summer of 2001, criticizing what he perceived to be Mr. Ashcroft's disinterest in counterterrorism. Mr. Pickard, who did not return phone calls seeking comment, is also expected to testify next week.

Mr. Ashcroft may also be confronted with an internal administration budget document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, showing that he had gone along with a WHITE HOUSE PLAN to sharply cut an emergency F.B.I. request for $1.5 billion in extra counterterrorism money after the attacks."

Also, the issue of Freeh's being more interested in nailing Clinton is raised:

"Commission officials said that evidence gathered by the commission showed that Mr. Freeh had become so involved in managing a handful of criminal investigations, most prominently the investigation of the 1996 bombing of American military barracks in Saudi Arabia, and in other STRUGGLES WITH THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE that the potential for a domestic terrorist attack by Al Qaeda received relatively little attention."

Add to this Ashcroft's move away from flying commercial, and the information, referenced in the article, about memos about pilot training in the U.S., etc., that never saw the light of day, and I'm wondering what has been up inside the FBI.

A final note -- I am not anti-religious, and am a church member, but this is what happens when what my mother used to call "religious nuts" are put in high positions in government: the fundamentalist Ashcroft and alleged Opus Dei Freeh. I am enraged after reading this article, pairing these two --

[Racenut20]

1. You pegged Ashcroft right

Hopefully it is a "political toe tag"..

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Adding a post from Triana, from LBN...

expanding on these issues:

Whether the 9-11 Commission will actually really hammer As*crust and Freeh on these items remains to be seen but they have surfaced in recent reports and again, in the one above:
__

NEWSWEEK: In the Months Before 9/11, Justice Department Curtailed Highly Classified Program to Monitor Al Qaeda Suspects in the U.S.
Sunday March 21, 10:51 am ET

'They Came in There With Their Agenda and was not on it,' Says Former Counterterrorism Chief Clarke of Bush Administration

NEW YORK, March 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Newsweek has learned that in the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called "Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States, after a federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists. During the Bush administration's first few months in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas in the March 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 22).

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief of the national-security staff, tells Newsweek that at an April 2001 top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, his effort to focus on Al Qaeda was rebuffed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam Hussein.

In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody believes that," Clarke recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." A spokesman for Wolfowitz describes Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz always regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," says this official.

Clarke tells Newsweek that the day after 9/11, President Bush wanted the FBI and CIA to hunt for any evidence that pointed to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Clarke recalls that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was also looking for a justification to bomb Iraq. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld was arguing at a cabinet meeting that Afghanistan, home of Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps, did not offer "enough good targets." "We should do Iraq," Rumsfeld urged.

Six days after the president's request, Clarke says, he turned in a classified memo concluding that there was no evidence of Iraqi complicity in 9/11-nor any relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The memo, says Clarke, was buried by an administration that was determined to get Iraq, sooner or later. In his new book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke portrays the Bush White House as indifferent to the Qaeda threat before 9/11, then obsessed with punishing Iraq, regardless of the what the evidence showed about Saddam's Qaeda ties, or lack of them.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040321/nysu007a_1.html

********************

bu$hit CUT Anti-Terror Funds After 9-11

In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows.

The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House Office of Management and Budget cut that request to $531 million. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, working within the White House limits, cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half, cut a cyber-security request by three quarters and eliminated entirely a request for "collaborative capabilities."

The document was one of several administration papers obtained and given to The Washington Post by the Center for American Progress, a liberal group run by former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks.

The documents are being released as Clinton and Bush administration officials prepare to testify this week about their counterterrorism efforts before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. They add to an already vigorous debate in which Bush officials and former Clinton aides are blaming each other for failing to take the terrorist threat seriously enough.

...

"A draft of Ashcroft's "Strategic Plan" from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs."

By contrast, Janet Reno's number one goal was fighting terrorism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13541-2004Mar21.html

[cybildisobedience]

3. That's one thing that has always puzzled me in this -

Why has Louis Freeh basically been given a pass in this whole thing? Why isn't his name dragged through the mud every day for his failures during the '90s?
I know he was the far right's fair-haired boy all those years because he wasted his agency's manpower on investigating Clinton's sex life, but isn't it apparent now that they could have been doing more important things than walking Monica Lewinsky around Crate and Barrel?

[DeepModem Mom]

4. You pinned the nail on their priorities! Crate and Barrel!

[SpiralHawk]

5. In the days before 9/11, Ashcroft was obsessing about prostitution

in New Orleans.

He was channeling copious federal resources in an effort to find a prostitute or two in New Orleans -- and turning his back on the defense of the USA from terrorists.

Read it and weep for our Mis-Led nation:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/fbi_brothel/6.html?sect=18

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Again, like Freeh, focused on "sin": Monica, and hookers...

in New Orleans!