Ashcroft speaks to Missouri-Kansas Forum, discusses security

WASHINGTON -- Guarding against terrorist attacks is like trying to work a puzzle without the box-top picture, Attorney General John Ashcroft told Missouri and Kansas lobbyists and congressional aides Tuesday.

Now head of the Justice Department, Ashcroft explained how the Sept. 11 attacks shifted his agency's focus from prosecution to prevention.

Law enforcement in America has always relied on the threat of prosecution to deter people from committing crimes, Ashcroft said, but it doesn't work against terrorists "because people extinguish themselves in the commission of a crime," as with the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"It's meant that we've had to retool and redirect our energy," Ashcroft said. "If you're going to try and prosecute a terrorist, you literally need to follow an evidentiary trail around the world; it takes a lot of cooperation from a lot of jurisdictions. It's even more difficult to try and develop the information to anticipate and prevent."

Ashcroft said that when he talks to children about it, he compares it to working puzzles.

"You have to imagine that you're in a room with a thousand different puzzles, all strewn all over the floor, and that the box tops don't exist, so that you don't have any cues," Ashcroft said.

'Pieces of information'

"You're trying to find pieces of information and assemble the information in advance of the picture ever having been formed. It's doable, but it's tough, and it's a different set of skills," he said.

The attorney general was asked for his thoughts on creation of the new Homeland Security Department, which will abolish the Immigration and Naturalization Service and create two bureaus within the new agency, one for border security and one for citizenship and benefits.

Ashcroft mentioned the INS shift as well as shifting of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department, and he cautioned that the agencies will have to work hard at cooperation.

"One of the things we've got to be careful of is that we don't disintegrate and fragment our law enforcement activity, because integration is the key to match the fragmentation of these criminal enterprises and activities," he said.

The former U.S. senator and governor from Missouri addressed the Missouri-Kansas Forum at one of the group's regular breakfasts on Capitol Hill. His audience was made up of Republicans and Democrats alike -- including former Kansas Democratic Rep. Jim Slattery -- several of them longtime acquaintances and supporters.

Ashcroft opened and closed his remarks with wisecracks at the expense of Slattery and other Kansans in the crowd.

Ashcroft said it was a good morning for the Missouri-Kansas forum because Missouri was just named No. 10 in the USA Today/ESPN college basketball poll.

Several asked him where Kansas was in the rankings.

"What? Where's Kansas? You know, more people ask me that," Ashcroft said as the crowd laughed. "Where is Kansas? Just west of Missouri. Did you mean in the poll? In the poll, it's south of Missouri."

Kansas was No. 19 in the ESPN poll.

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On the Net

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov/