From Philip Shenon of the NY Times:
Washington -- Draft reports by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks portray Attorney General John Ashcroft as largely uninterested in counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11 despite intelligence warnings that summer that al Qaeda was planning a large, perhaps catastrophic terrorist attack, according to panel officials and others with access to the reports.
They said the draft reports, which are expected to be completed and made public during two days of hearings by the commission this week, show that FBI officials were alarmed throughout 2001 by what they perceived as Ashcroft's lack of interest in terrorism issues and his decision in August 2001 to turn down the bureau's request for a large expansion of its counterterrorism programs.
The draft reports, they said, quote the FBI's former counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying that he "fell off my chair" when he learned that Ashcroft had failed to list combating terrorism as one of the department's priorities in a March 2001 departmentwide memo.
They said the reports will also quote from internal memos by Thomas Pickard, acting director of the FBI in the summer of 2001, in which Pickard described his frustration with Ashcroft and what he saw as the attorney general's lack of interest in the issue of how the bureau was investigating terror suspects in the United States.
Washington -- Draft reports by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks portray Attorney General John Ashcroft as largely uninterested in counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11 despite intelligence warnings that summer that al Qaeda was planning a large, perhaps catastrophic terrorist attack, according to panel officials and others with access to the reports.
They said the draft reports, which are expected to be completed and made public during two days of hearings by the commission this week, show that FBI officials were alarmed throughout 2001 by what they perceived as Ashcroft's lack of interest in terrorism issues and his decision in August 2001 to turn down the bureau's request for a large expansion of its counterterrorism programs.
The draft reports, they said, quote the FBI's former counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying that he "fell off my chair" when he learned that Ashcroft had failed to list combating terrorism as one of the department's priorities in a March 2001 departmentwide memo.
They said the reports will also quote from internal memos by Thomas Pickard, acting director of the FBI in the summer of 2001, in which Pickard described his frustration with Ashcroft and what he saw as the attorney general's lack of interest in the issue of how the bureau was investigating terror suspects in the United States.
