Ashcroft’s Efforts on Terrorism CriticizedBy Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers

The former acting director of the FBI testified yesterday that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft rejected any further briefings on terrorist threats in the weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and did not view combating al Qaeda as ”a top item on his agenda.”

Thomas J. Pickard, who ran the FBI for several months before the attacks, also told the commission investigating the terrorist strikes that Ashcroft rejected a plea that summer for an extra $58 million to combat al Qaeda. Pickard testified that he received the formal denial on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the attacks. …

The allegations came during another day of dramatic and often tense testimony before the panel. They prompted an aggressive defense from Ashcroft, who denied barring Pickard from offering him threat reports and said he was highly focused on the dangers posed by terrorists that summer.

Ashcroft sought to blame the Clinton administration for many of the shortcomings in counterterrorism strategies before the attacks….

One day after telling the Senate that combating terrorist attacks was his highest priority, Ashcroft issued a memo on May 10, 2001, outlining the Justice Department’s strategic goals that contained no mention of counterterrorism. Dale Watson, the FBI’s terrorism chief at the time, told the commission staff that he “almost fell out of his chair” when he read it.

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: The 9-11 Commission Staff statements from the hearing are available online in PDF format.