Ashcroft blames Clinton's 'failed policy' on bin Laden

[CatWoman]

WASHINGTON -- In a strong defense of the Bush administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday the nation was stunned by the Sept. 11 attacks because "for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to our enemies."

Appearing before a commission looking into the worst terror strike in the nation's history, Ashcroft also said he moved quickly once in office to overturn a "failed policy" that allowed American agents to capture terrorist leader Osama bin Laden but not to assassinate him.

In nationally televised testimony, Ashcroft said that a legal wall that had been put in place to separate criminal investigators from intelligence agents. "Even if they could have penetrated bin Laden's training camps, they would have needed a battery of lawyers" to take action, he said dismissively.

Ashcroft slid into the witness chair on a day on which the panel issued reports indicating that a more nimble FBI and CIA working together might have uncovered the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist plot, and laying out an agonizing series of missed opportunities, half measures and bureaucratic inertia.

In a written report, the panel also quoted former Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard as saying Ashcroft told him in the summer of 2001 that "he did not want to hear" additional information about possible attacks.

Ashcroft denies making the statement, the commission said.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0404/13sept11.html