KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick?
GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You said in response to -- I think it was Commissioner Ben- Veniste's question -- that you, indeed, had been struck from the list of senior executives in the administration who got the presidential daily brief. I think you said you did not get it.
And that is curious, I think, given Dr. Rice's testimony that the domestic aspect of our national security was largely in the Department of Justice and FBI bailiwick.
You, when you were interviewed by our staff with regard to the adequacy of the FBI's response to the intelligence that was coming out in the summer of '01, said that you accepted the FBI's assurance that the threats were overseas and, sort of, assumed that things must be in hand and that whatever they were doing was adequate to respond. And then you said, I think quite candidly, that this was a dangerous assumption to make.
Now here is my question: You did not get the presidential daily brief, but you did get the senior executive intelligence brief that was provided to the next rung of the government.
GORELICK: Is that correct? You got that daily?
ASHCROFT: The SEIB...
GORELICK: The SEIB.
ASHCROFT: ... was available to me.
GORELICK: On August 7th, 2001, a SEIB that reflected much of -- although it was not identical to -- much of the content of the August 6th presidential daily brief came out. And I would like to ask you if you remember seeing a document headed, "Terrorism: Bin Laden Determined To Strike In The United States," in the SEIB.
ASHCROFT: I do not remember seeing that. I was in -- I believe I was in Chicago speaking at the American Bar Association meeting, I believe, at the time. So I do not have a recollection of seeing that.
GORELICK: Did your staff regularly brief you on the intelligence when you returned?
ASHCROFT: I was briefed, and items of interest were noted for me from time to time by my staff.
GORELICK: Would something like this, which is a memorandum that is going out to your colleagues, hundreds of your colleagues in the government, saying that bin Laden is determined to strike in the United States, been an item of significance that you would think would have been briefed to you?
ASHCROFT: These items had been briefed to me. They had been briefed to me by the FBI, they have been briefed to me by the CIA. The administration asked me to get briefings when appropriate in regard to these measures.
I remember Ms. Rice, for example, early in July, during the threat period and the heightened and elevated threat, asking me if I would receive a briefing from the CIA because she thought it important.
It's that kind of briefing that I received early.
The CIA, we have reconstructed it from the slides they used, talked a lot about the threat overseas. And we, obviously, were aware of the historical information that Osama bin Laden had issued statements years before, much of which is in the SEIB and was in the August 6th PDB, which I have now read.
ASHCROFT: But we inquired of the CIA and the FBI: Are there domestic threats that require -- is there any evidence of domestic threat? And they both said no. I might add that for the CIA, I inquired of them: Are there things we can do additionally by way of FISA to assist you in making sure that we have all the information necessary to be aware of those threats. And they assured me that if they needed additional help, they would ask for it.
GORELICK: So you were aware in early August -- by at least early August of '01 that in addition to the fatwas and the statements of intention by bin Laden, that there was evidence that he intended to strike in the United States? Is that correct?
ASHCROFT: Well, I don't know if in addition to the fatwas and his statement of intention. We were aware that he had stated his intention, of the historical items mentioned in the SEIB and I believe also mentioned in the PDB. We were aware that those kinds of historical references had been made. And it was with that in mind, in conjunction with our understanding of what he had done in terms of the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, that we understood him to be a very serious individual and we should take him seriously.
GORELICK: As a result of your awareness of this domestic threat, did you review with Acting Director Pickard the specific actions that he had taken to ensure that information in the possession of agents of the FBI across America relating to bin Laden's threats, his capacity, his ability to strike us, activities that might be going on in the United States, that that information would be flowing up to you?
ASHCROFT: I queried the director on numbers of occasions about threats in the United States that would require our attention.
ASHCROFT: I expected those queries to result in the kind of activity which we saw in the FBI across the summer -- not only in the face-to-face inquiries at the SAC meetings, but in the telephone inquiries and in the communications -- through the electronic communication as well as the inlets -- which shared those awarenesses with the rest of the law enforcement community in the country.
We viewed inlets as a force multiplier because we got away from just the 12,000 FBI agents to the 700,000 or so law enforcement officials in the country. And we wanted those to be pulsed, as well.
GORELICK: Do you know if any of the inlets actually produced any information to the FBI?
ASHCROFT: I do not know and would not be expecting to know what 700,000 or so law enforcement officials might be saying to the people in the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country. And I'm sure they were saying lots of things. But obviously I wouldn't be aware of those.
GORELICK: Thank you very much.
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