Reflections on events and changes at the Department of Justice.

• Author: Ashcroft, John D.

Few have had the profound privilege to serve their country as I have during my career of public service. It has been an even higher honor to serve in a time of national crisis. Such was my tenure as the eightieth Attorney General of the United States.

The privilege of serving as Missouri's State Auditor, Attorney General Governor, and Senator had been mine. I expected the end of my Senate career to mark the end of my career in public service. But when President George W. Bush asked me to continue my service to the nation as the United States Attorney General I welcomed the opportunity to lead the only agency in government with a value as its title. "Justice" to me is a peerless value--a dedication to securing the rights and freedoms of America and each of its citizens.

Little did I know that during my time as Attorney General, we would experience the most devastating terrorist attack ever on American soil, and our country would be plunged into a war unlike any before. The war on terrorism became the overriding focus of the Department of Justice and my mission as Attorney General became clear: to transform a peacetime Justice Department ill-prepared for the challenges of 9/11, into a wartime Justice Department focused on the defense of life and liberty by ushering in a new culture of prevention. And despite these unprecedented challenges, I remained committed to protecting our constitutional liberties.

After being nominated by the President to serve as Attorney General, I did not have the luxury of being able to focus fully on preparing for the job. It became clear that the President's recently-defeated political opponents, along with their liberal allies such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the People for the American Way, and the National Organization for Women, were preparing to oppose my confirmation with all their might.

A brutal confirmation process followed, with an all-out assault only previously seen during the confirmation battles of Judge Robert Bork and then-Judge Clarence Thomas. In many ways my confirmation became a proxy fight over the political divisions of the day. Ultimately, the Senate approved my nomination on February 1, 2001, on a 58-42 vote. With the confirmation battle over, I was eager to focus on the job at hand. I knew there was much work to be done at the Justice Department, and particularly at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In studying the tenure of my predecessor, Janet Reno, it became clear an Attorney General could easily be distracted from a planned agenda by the crises at hand. Attorney General Reno's term was best known for things on which I am sure she did not plan to focus. The shooting at Ruby Ridge, the disaster involving the Branch Davidian Compound at Waco, the deportation of Elian Gonzales, investigations of Clinton scandals-these were the issues with which the public identified the Justice Department.

We began our Administration with a clear goal to focus the Justice Department back on its mission:

[T]o enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; to administer and enforce the Nation's immigration laws fairly and effectively; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. (1) The Department of Justice is a massive bureaucracy with roughly 110,000 employees spread out over thirty-nine separate component organizations. We entered the Department focused on a series of strategic goals including protecting America against the threat of terrorism, enforcing federal criminal laws, preventing and reducing crime--violent and gun crime in particular--and protecting the liberties and interests of the American people. (2)

We learned first-hand on Day One how events can overtake the best-laid plans. After walking the entire building to meet and shake hands with as many employees as possible, I attended a small reception welcoming me to the Department. During the reception, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh pulled me aside and asked for a private word. It was then I learned of the spy Robert Hanssen. The next seventeen days were focused on building an airtight case against Hanssen until his arrest on February 18, 2001.

The distraction of the Hanssen matter was quickly followed by a series of brushfires threatening to burn broadly: a stand-off at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple which contained the seeds of the previous Justice Department's encounter with David Koresh and the Branch Davidian Compound In Waco, a national debate about my voluntary personal devotional sessions held prior to the workday in the Attorney General's office, and a botched prosecution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. All of these matters would soon seem inconsequential when America was attacked and our nation was at war.

1. THE ATTACK OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

   In the history of our nation, few days are as defining as September 11, 2001. On that day, a small number of my staff and I were flying on a small Citation jet to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to read with a group of schoolchildren as part of the President's initiative to focus on literacy. Many remember that the President himself was reading to schoolchildren in Sarasota, Florida when he learned about the attacks.

   While flying over Michigan, we received an urgent message from the Justice Department Command Center with the news that two commercial airliners had struck the World Trade Center towers. I turned to my staff and said, "The world has changed forever. The country will never be the same." Because our plane did not have enough fuel to return to Washington, we landed in Milwaukee to refuel as quickly as possible. While on the ground we learned about the third plane that had hit the Pentagon and a fourth that was off course in Pennsylvania, potentially headed toward the Capitol. After refueling, I ordered our pilot to return to Washington despite a directive for all planes to remain grounded. Refusing advice from air traffic control to land in Detroit and then again in Richmond, Virginia, we finally had to wait just outside Washington, D.C. until an Air Force fighter jet could escort us in safely, because there was a shoot-down order for any planes entering Washington, D.C. airspace. We could see black smoke pouring toward the sky from the Pentagon while approaching the nation's capital and while landing. We would soon learn that our close friend Barbara Olson was on the plane that had crashed into the Pentagon. Barbara's husband, Ted Olson, was the Solicitor General of the United States and a key member of the Justice Department leadership.

   After landing, we first joined the mass exodus of humanity leaving Washington. I had been directed to operate from a remote, undisclosed location. But traffic was so congested that I appealed that directive and headed to the Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) at the FBI, where I would spend most of my waking hours over the next several weeks. It was there that we launched the largest criminal investigation in the history of the world. And it was there that we quickly came to realize the need for a comprehensive overhaul of how the United States deals with the threat of terrorism.

   The next day, the President assembled top officials to assess the damage and plan our response. It was there that the President turned to me and said, "Don't ever let this happen again." That statement became the guidepost for the remainder of my time as Attorney General: "Never again."

   Soon after the meeting with the President I gathered the leadership of the Justice Department. Our mission was clear: Investigate the attack and those who carried it out, do everything within our power to prevent another attack (we lived under the daily expectation that a second wave was imminent), and evaluate the law and develop new, modern tools necessary for law enforcement to counter the twenty-first-century threat of terrorism. My framing instruction to the Department was that in all of our efforts we be prepared to think outside of the box, but never outside of the Constitution.

2. USHERING IN A CULTURE OF PREVENTION

   Our immediate focus was the need to change the culture of the Department of Justice from a model prioritizing prosecution of terrorism to a model prioritizing the prevention of terrorism. During the National Security Council meeting the Wednesday after 9/11, we had already established we were likely dealing with an attack from al Qaeda. It is hard to imagine now, but at the time most Americans...