Ashcroft's Way
America's top cop has been demonized and lionized. He's a complex guy all right, just not the guy everyone thinks he is
By the numbers. Public perceptions aside, there are growing questions about whether Ashcroft's prevention paradigm works. In his new book Enemy Aliens, Georgetown University law Prof. David Cole examines the preventive detentions of roughly 5,000 foreign nationals--Muslim men--after the terrorist attacks. Only three were ultimately charged with terrorism-related crimes. Just one was convicted. At the time, Ashcroft called the detainees "suspected terrorists" and announced the deportation of more than 500 Muslim men as a signal victory in the "war on terror." In fact, the 500 were deported only after the FBI found no terrorist ties. "They were misses," Cole says, "not hits."
A study by researchers at Syracuse University found still more troubling news. While the Justice Department has sharply increased terrorism prosecutions, the study found that only a handful of defendants were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The study, whose conclusions the FBI disputes, found that while the Justice Department convicted 184 people of crimes related to "international terrorism," the defendants were sentenced to average prison terms of just 14 days and, in some instances, received no jail time. Remarkably, after 9/11, fewer numbers of defendants in terrorism-related cases were sentenced to five years or more than before the attacks.
Ashcroft is unapologetic about his tactics or their results. "One thing that's clear to me, every day of my life," he said, "when I look at the world, I see terrorism has not abated. It's flourished. And it's my view that the terrorists would rather hit us than anybody else. That's why we are still referred to as `the Great Satan.' So preventing, or interrupting, disrupting, displacing, dislocating, delaying--anything we do to prevent terrorist attacks, is important."
That's precisely the kind of rhetoric that gets Ashcroft in trouble, with critics seizing on terms like the hair-raising "anything." "Clearly the actions, policies, and laws he's promulgated," says the American Civil Liberties Union's executive director, Anthony Romero, "show a fundamental lack of concern for enforcing civil liberties and civil rights."
Outside the box. Ashcroft's rhetoric, however, is often at odds with his actions out of the public eye. Several aides recounted the story of a Justice Department brainstorming session in Ashcroft's office shortly after 9/11. "One of our colleagues, she said something pretty far-fetched that wasn't going to work," says Thompson, Ashcroft's former deputy. "I remember John sternly turning to her and saying, `I asked you to think outside the box but not outside the Constitution.' " Says another official, "You can always find staff people, younger people trying to push the envelope. I think Ashcroft was, in general, a more moderating influence."
Current and former associates say that much of the damage to Ashcroft's image has been self-inflicted. "His aides have a philosophy that it no longer matters reaching the undecideds, because they don't vote; what really matters is energizing your base," says a Justice Department official. "And I think their political view of the world is that we don't need to reach out to anybody but the people who like us and love us."
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