John Ashcroft

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United States Senator from Missouri
John David Ashcroft

79th United States Attorney General
In office January 20, 2001 – February 3, 2005
Under President	George W. Bush
Preceded by	Janet Reno
Succeeded by	Alberto Gonzales
In office January 4, 1995 – January 3, 2001
Preceded by	John C. Danforth
Succeeded by	Jean Carnahan
50th Governor of Missouri
In office 1985 – 1993
Preceded by	Christopher S. "Kit" Bond
Succeeded by	Mel Carnahan

Born	May 09, 1942 (age 64) Chicago, Illinois
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Janet

John David Ashcroft (born May 9, 1942) was the 79th Attorney General of the United States. He served during the first term of President George W. Bush from 2001 until 2005. Ashcroft was previously the Governor of Missouri (1985–1993) and a U.S. Senator from Missouri (1995–2001). He is the author of several books, including: On My Honor: The Beliefs that Shape My Life, Lessons from a Father to his Son, and most recently, Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice.

1 Early career: lawyer, governor
2 U.S. Senator
3 2000 reelection campaign
- 3.1 Council of Conservative Citizens connections
4 U.S. Attorney General
5 Consultant and lobbyist
6 CIA leak conflict of interest allegation
7 Singer-songwriter
8 Academia
9 Offered services to Satellite Radio
10 Footnotes
11 References
12 External links

[edit] Early career: lawyer, governor

Ashcroft was born in Chicago to James Robert Ashcroft, a president of Evangel University, and Grace P. Larsen, whose parents were immigrants from Norway.^[1] As a child he had very serious glaucoma. His father was a minister in an Assembly of God congregation. Ashcroft was educated in Springfield, Missouri, and at Yale University, where he graduated in 1964. He received a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1967, and briefly taught business law and worked as an administrator at Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State University). Ashcroft is also a member of Sigma Tau Gamma Fraternity

As a political neophyte in 1972, Ashcroft ran for Congress in Southwest Missouri. Ashcroft narrowly lost the Republican primary to Gene Taylor, who went on to hold the seat for 16 years. After the primary, Governor Christopher Bond appointed Ashcroft as state auditor, the office Bond had vacated to assume the governorship.

In 1974 Ashcroft was narrowly defeated by Jackson County Executive George W. Lehr, who argued that Ashcroft, who was not an accountant, was not qualified to serve as state auditor. Jack Danforth, who was then in his second term as state attorney general, hired Ashcroft as an assistant Missouri attorney general. During his tenure as assistant AG, Ashcroft shared an office suite with future Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas; and it would be his old friend, Justice Thomas, who would eventually administer Ashcroft's oath of office as US attorney general in 2001.

In 1976 Danforth was elected to his first of three terms in the US Senate, and Ashcroft was elected to replace him as attorney general. Ashcroft was re-elected in 1980, and was elected governor in 1984. In 1988, Ashcroft became the first (and, to date, the only) Republican elected to consecutive gubernatorial terms in Missouri history. During his second term, from 1991 to 1992, Ashcroft served as Chairman of the National Governors Association.

As Senator and Governor, Ashcroft helped enact tougher standards and sentencing for gun crimes, increased funding for local law enforcement, and tougher standards and punishment for people bringing guns into schools. While Ashcroft was in office:

The number of full-time law enforcement officers in Missouri increased 3,825 (63%) from 1985 to 1992.
Capacity at Missouri corrections facilities increased by 72% from 9,071 in 1985 to 15,630 in 1993.
Missouri was above average in the length of time criminals had to serve for all sentences according to Gail Hughes, deputy director for the state Corrections Department, citing the 1991 yearbook published by the Criminal Justice Institute. The national average for time served for all crimes was 23.7 months, while in Missouri the average length of a sentence was 28.9 months.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, prison time as a percentage of the time sentenced to jail was 73% in 1993 and increased to 86% in 1997.
The number of juveniles who were arrested for committing a crime increased by 16.3% between from 1985 and 1992.
While Ashcroft was governor, Missouri enacted its first hate crimes legislation, creating penalties for ethnic intimidation and crimes committed for motives based on race, color, religion, or national origin, and penalties for institutional vandalism for damages to ethnically-related buildings and property.
While Ashcroft was governor, the legislature enacted the Missouri Victim's Bill of Rights, which allows crime victims to be informed of and present at criminal proceedings, the right to restitution, the right to protection from the defendant and the right to be informed of the escape or release of a defendant.

[edit] U.S. Senator

In 1994 Ashcroft was elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri, again succeeding a retiring John Danforth. Ashcroft won 60% of the vote against Democratic Congressman Alan Wheat. As Senator:

He was a leading opponent of the Clinton Administration's Clipper encryption restrictions.
He voted to prohibit those convicted of felony or misdemeanor domestic violence from owning a firearm.
He convened the first and only Senate hearing on racial profiling, on March 30, 2000, with Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), where he stated that racial profiling is unconstitutional and said that he supported the concept of legislation requiring that statistics be kept of police actions.
In 1999, as chair of the Senate's subcommittee on patents, he played a pivotal role in extending patents for several drugs, most significantly Schering-Plough's allergy medication Claritin. ^[2]

[edit] 2000 reelection campaign

In 1998, Ashcroft briefly considered running for president in 2000, but on January 5, 1999, he announced that he would not seek the presidency and would instead defend his Senate seat in his 2000 reelection. ^[3]

In his bid for reelection to the Senate, Ashcroft faced a challenge from then-Governor Mel Carnahan. Carnahan died in an airplane crash two weeks prior to the November general election, but his name remained on the ballot due to Missouri state election laws. Lieutenant Governor Roger Wilson became Governor upon Carnahan's death. Wilson announced that should Carnahan be elected he would appoint his widow, Jean Carnahan, to serve in her husband's place; Mrs. Carnahan agreed to this arrangement.

Voters elected Mel Carnahan, although dead, by a narrow margin. No one had ever posthumously won election to the Senate, though voters on at least three occasions chose deceased candidates for the House.

This loss was despite having a larger budget than Carnahan that included controversial contributions from corporations such as Monsanto which contributed five times more to Ashcroft than to any other congressional hopeful at the time.

[edit] Council of Conservative Citizens connections

During the 2000 Senate campaign, Ashcroft met with Thomas Bugel, local president of the Council of Conservative Citizens (based in Missouri), to discuss the case of Dr. Charles T. Sell, a St. Louis dentist and CCC member indicted for several crimes including plotting to murder an FBI agent and a federal witness. Despite his frequently avowed stance as "tough on crime", Ashcroft subsequently wrote to the federal Justice Department on Sell's behalf. Following Ashcroft's nomination for federal attorney general and the subsequent public exposure of that meeting and letter, Ashcroft's spokeswoman Mindy Tucker asserted that he had not known that Bugel was associated with the CCC; this despite his having had extensive previous contact with Bugel between 1987 and 1993, when Bugel had been a member of the St. Louis school board vociferously defending segregation, and Ashcroft had been attorney general and governor of Missouri who sided with Bugel. During that period, Bugel's leadership of the local branch of the CCC, the Metro South Citizens Council, was often noted in the media. ^[4]

Ashcroft had previously denounced the CCC as racist, after a controversial interview in Southern Partisan magazine in which he expressed views which were widely interpreted as pro-Confederacy.

[edit] U.S. Attorney General

Following his Senatorial defeat, Ashcroft was nominated as U.S. Attorney General by president-elect George W. Bush in December 2000. Ashcroft was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 58-42, with most of the Democratic Senators voting against him, alleging previous opposition to desegregation and abortion rights.

[edit] Religion and conservatism

Ashcroft, a fervent lifelong member of the Assemblies of God church, has brought the denomination more mainstream recognition than any of its earlier conspicuous congregants, including, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and former Reagan administration Interior Secretary James Watt. In his book Lessons From a Father to His Son (1998), Ashcroft writes of his anointing himself, before both terms as Missouri Governor, using cooking oil when no holy oil was available ^[5].

The former senator famously once boasted of his conservatism, saying that there are two things you find in the middle of the road: "a moderate and a dead skunk", adding that he did not wish to be either.

[edit] Anti-terrorism

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Ashcroft was a key supporter of passage of the USA Patriot Act. One of the provisions in that Act was the controversial Section 215, which allows for warrant-less seizures of patron records from libraries and seizure of bookstore customer records. Ashcroft referred to American Library Association opposition to Section 215 as "hysteria" in two separate speeches given in September, 2003 ^[6]^[7]. During his tenure at Justice, Ashcroft consistently denied that the FBI or any other law enforcement agency had used the Patriot Act to obtain library circulation records or those of retail sales.

Ashcroft's positions on privacy and civil liberties issues made him an extremely disliked figure by libertarian, left-wing and liberal groups. Groups opposed to the Bush administration often mentioned him as epitomizing all the reasons for their opposition. Some of his most prominent critics were organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and pro-choice groups. Opponents claimed that Ashcroft used the threat of terrorism to further political goals. Examples cited include:

In July 2002, Ashcroft proposed the creation of Operation TIPS, a domestic program in which workers and government employees would inform law enforcement agencies about suspicious behavior they encounter while performing their duties. The program was criticized in the media as an encroachment upon the First and Fourth Amendments, and the United States Postal Service balked at the program, refusing outright to participate. Ashcroft defended the program as a necessary component of the ongoing War on Terrorism, but the proposal was eventually abandoned.
Ashcroft was responsible for draft legislation - the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, which proposed to greatly expand the powers of the U.S. government to fight crime and terrorism, while simultaneously eliminating or curtailing judicial review of these powers for incidents involving domestic terrorism. The bill was leaked and posted to the Internet on February 7, 2003.
On May 26, 2004, Ashcroft held a news conference at which he said that intelligence from multiple sources indicated that al Qaeda intended to attack the United States in the coming months. [1] Critics said this was an attempt to distract attention from a drop in the approval ratings of President Bush, who was campaigning for re-election.

[edit] Drug sentencing

Ashcroft was an enthusiastic advocate of the War on Drugs ^[8]. In a 2001 interview on Larry King Live, Ashcroft announced his intent to escalate efforts in this area ^[9]. His tough-on-marijuana stance dates back to his tenure as a Senator, when he successfully pushed for stricter federal mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses. He continued this stance as the Governor of Missouri, favoring a drug control policy that focused law enforcement efforts on casual drug users.

In 2003, Ashcroft and the acting DEA Administrator, John B. Brown, announced a series of indictments resulting from two nationwide investigations code-named Operation Pipe Dream and Operation Headhunter. The investigations targeted businesses selling drug paraphernalia, mostly marijuana pipes and bongs, under a little-used statute (Title 21, Section 863(a) of the U.S. Code ^[10]). Counterculture icon Tommy Chong was one of those charged, for his part in financing and promoting Chong Glass/Nice Dreams, a company started by his son Paris. Of the 55 individuals charged as a result of the operations, only Chong was given a prison sentence (nine months in a federal jail, plus forfeiting $103,000 and a year of probation). The other 54 individuals were given fines and home detentions. While the DOJ denied that Chong was treated any differently from the other defendants, many felt that he was made an example of by the government. Chong's experience as a target of Ashcroft's sting operation was documented by filmmaker Josh Gilbert in the feature length film, a/k/a Tommy Chong, which premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival.

[edit] Other

In January 2002, the partially nude female statue of the Spirit of Justice, which stands in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, where Ashcroft held press conferences, was covered with blue curtains, along with its male counterpart, the Majesty of Law. It was speculated this change was made because Ashcroft felt that reporters were photographing him with the female statue in the background to make fun of his church's opposition to pornography. A Justice Department spokeswoman said that Ashcroft knew nothing of the decision to spend $8,000 for the curtains; a spokesman said the decision for permanent curtains was intended to save on the $2,000 per use rental costs of temporary curtains used for formal events. ^[11] In late June 2005, Ashcroft's successor, Alberto Gonzales, approved the removal of the curtains.

In February 2002, Ashcroft told the Los Angeles Times that in his opinion "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you". ^[12]

In March 2004, Ashcroft entered the George Washington Medical Center with gallstone pancreatitis; surgeons removed his gallbladder (cholecystectomy) within a week.

[edit] Resignation

On November 9, 2004, Ashcroft announced his resignation from his post as Attorney General, which took effect on February 3, 2005 with the Senate confirmation of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as the next Attorney General. Some believe his health was a factor in his decision. His hand-written resignation letter, dated November 2, stated: "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

[edit] Consultant and lobbyist

Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft holds a press conference near Sacramento.

In May 2005, Ashcroft laid the groundwork for a strategic consulting firm which bears his name. The Ashcroft Group, LLC ^[13] officially opened its doors in the Fall of 2005 and as of March 2006 had lined up 21 clients, turning down two for every one accepted ^[14].

In 2005 year-end filings, Ashcroft's firm reported collecting $269,000, including $220,000 from Oracle Corporation, which won Department of Justice approval of a multibillion-dollar acquisition less than a month after hiring Ashcroft. The income totals that Ashcroft has reported so far represent in some cases only initial payments.

According to government filings, Oracle is one of the Ashcroft Group’s five clients which seek his help in selling data or software with homeland security applications. Another client, Israel Aircraft Industries International, is competing with Chicago's Boeing Company to sell the government of South Korea a billion-dollar airborne radar system. [9] The Ashcroft Group is also registered to represent ChoicePoint, eBay, Exegy, Alanco Technologies, LTU Technologies and Trafficland, Inc. ^[15]

In March 2006, the New York Times reported that Ashcroft was setting himself up as something of an "anti-Abramoff", and that in an hour long interview, Ashcroft used the word integrity scores of times. ^[16]. In May 2006, based on conversations with members of Congress, key aides and lobbyists, The Hill magazine listed Ashcroft as one of top 50 "hired guns" that K Street had to offer. ^[17] In August 2006, the Washington Post reported that Ashcroft's firm had 30 clients, many of which made products or technology aimed at homeland security, and about a third of which the firm has not disclosed, to protect client confidentiality. The firm also had equity stakes in eight client companies. It reported receiving $1.4 million in lobbying fees in the past six months, a small fraction of its total earnings. ^[18]

[edit] CIA leak conflict of interest allegation

Main article: CIA leak grand jury investigation

When Karl Rove was being questioned by the FBI over the leak of a covert CIA agent's identity in the press, Ashcroft was personally briefed about the investigation. U.S. Representative John Conyers described this at the time as a "stunning ethical breach that cries out for an immediate investigation."^[19] Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter asking for a formal investigation of the time between the start of Rove's investigation and John Ashcroft's recusal.^[20]

[edit] Singer-songwriter

Ashcroft composed a paean called "Let the Eagle Soar" which he sang at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in February 2002. The rendition was satirically featured in Michael Moore's 2004 movie Fahrenheit 9/11 and has been frequently mocked by comedians such as David Letterman and Jon Stewart. The song was also sung at Bush's 2005 inauguration by Guy Hovis, former cast member of The Lawrence Welk Show. Ashcroft has penned and sung a number of other songs and created compilation tapes, including In the Spirit of Life and Liberty and Gospel (Music) According to John.

With fellow Senators Trent Lott, Larry Craig, and James Jeffords, he formed a barbershop quartet called The Singing Senators.

Sometime in the 1970s, Ashcroft recorded a gospel record entitled TRUTH: Volume One, Edition One with Missouri legislator Max Bacon, a Democrat.^[21]

[edit] Academia

On March 18, 2005, Regent University, a primarily graduate university founded by Pat Robertson with its main campus in Virginia Beach, Virginia, announced that Ashcroft would join the school's faculty on July 1. He now serves jointly in Regent's law and government schools. ^[22]

[edit] Offered services to Satellite Radio

Ashcroft, who sent a letter on February 27, 2007 to his successor Alberto Gonzales criticizing the proposed merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., approached XM in the days after the merger was announced offering the firm his consulting services, a spokesman for XM said, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The spokesman said XM declined Ashcroft's offer to work as a lobbyist for the company. Ashcroft was subsequently hired by the National Association of Broadcasters, which is fiercely opposed to the merger. On its behalf, he conducted a review of the effects on competition if the two satellite radio companies were allowed to merge. In his letter to Gonzales on February 27, Ashcroft concluded the merger would have a significant negative impact on competition in the market and urged the current attorney general to withhold approval for the merger. ^[23]

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

Mintz, John and Allen, Mike. "To Suspicious Candidates, the Threat of Attack Is No Longer Above the Fray." The Washington Post, June 27, 2004.

[edit] External links

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John Ashcroft

Preceded by Christopher S. Bond	Missouri State Auditor 1973–1974	Succeeded by George W. Lehr
Preceded by John C. Danforth	Missouri State Attorney General 1976–1985	Succeeded by William L. Webster
Preceded by Christopher S. Bond	Governor of Missouri 1985–1993	Succeeded by Mel Carnahan
Preceded by John C. Danforth	U.S. Senator (Class 1) from Missouri 1995–2001	Succeeded by Jean Carnahan
Preceded by Janet Reno	Attorney General of the United States 2001–2005	Succeeded by Alberto Gonzales