Ashcroft was architect of US anti-terror policy

US Attorney General John Ashcroft, who resigned, was the Bush administration’s Chief architect of many domestic anti-terror policies adopted after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 that drastically curtailed civil liberties in US. Ashcroft defended the policies as necessary to prevent another attack and supported a sweeping anti-terror law that gave the government the power to tap phones, track Internet usage and detain immigrants.

He became a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil rights groups. Even as President Bush accepted his resignation, Ashcroft gave a different perspective on his tenure. ‘‘For three years since the worst attack in our nation’s history… America has not endured another major terrorist attack,’’ he said in a message to Justice Department . ‘‘John Ashcroft was one of the most destructive attorneys general in the modern era. His tenure was marked by a severe erosion of Americans’ constitutional liberties,’’ said Ralph Neas of People for the American Way, a liberal lobbying group.

Bush chose Ashcroft after Missouri voters refused to re-elect him to the US Senate in 2000, even though his opponent, Governor Mel Carnahan, was dead on election day, killed in a plane crash three weeks earlier. Carnahan’s widow, Jean, accepted appointment to the Senatein.

Ashcroft once ordered some $8,000 to be spent on a curtain to cover up two partially nude statues at the Justice Department so he would no longer be photographed in front of them. He ordered 5,000 men, most from the Middle East, to be questioned, while denying this was racial profiling. Reuters