By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A01

On Aug. 9, 2001, three days after President Bush was given a memo outlining Osama bin Laden's intent to mount attacks on U.S. soil, the Justice Department completed a draft of its seven strategic goals and 36 main objectives for the next four years.

The internal document, which mirrored many of the priorities in previous memos and statements by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, focused on drugs, violent crime and civil rights. Combating "terrorist activities" was mentioned once -- as the third objective under enforcement of criminal laws.

Aides characterize the list as a preliminary report never seen by Ashcroft and say it reflected the priorities of the previous attorney general, Janet Reno. But according to some members of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and others familiar with its findings, the memo reflects the low priority that Ashcroft placed on terrorism during his first seven months in office.

Ashcroft will face sharp questioning about the period, and whether he was sufficiently focused on the al Qaeda threat, during his appearance today before the commission. The line of inquiry will be unusual in its focus on Ashcroft's actions before the attacks. Most of the criticism aimed at the attorney general over the past 21/2 years has centered on whether his anti-terrorism strategies after the attacks have been too zealous.

Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, said in an interview that "we will be looking hard at the attorney general, at the FBI, CIA and many other parts of that community" in the hearings.

Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo yesterday pointed to Senate testimony in May 2001 in which Ashcroft endorsed additional funding for counterterrorism programs and said "our number one goal is the prevention of terrorist acts." Corallo also said that Ashcroft was briefed regularly by the CIA and FBI on the al Qaeda threat in the summer of 2001 but was told that there was no indication of a domestic plot.

"At every one of those briefings, he asked for more information, he asked them if there was any evidence of a domestic threat," Corallo said. "He was repeatedly told that there was no evidence of any threat against the United States."

Ashcroft will be among several current and former Justice and FBI officials to appear before the panel today and tomorrow. Reno, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, former FBI director Louis J. Freeh, former acting director Thomas J. Pickard and CIA Director George J. Tenet are among those scheduled to appear.

The FBI already has endured harsh criticism from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, as the panel is formally known, and its predecessor, the joint House-Senate inquiry into intelligence failures before the attacks. Investigators from both have cited the FBI's failure to act aggressively on a July 2001 report from a Phoenix FBI agent that al Qaeda operatives might be taking flight training in the United States and an August 2001 CIA report that two al Qaeda associates had entered the country. The pair took part in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Commissioner Timothy J. Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said, "We're going to have a plethora of questions for the FBI and for Justice . . . and I'm not sure they are going to have any good answers to those questions."

The shift in attention to the FBI and the Justice Department comes after weeks of focus on the public dispute between national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her former counterterrorism coordinator, Richard A. Clarke, who alleges that the Bush administration gave short shrift to combating bin Laden. On Saturday, the White House declassified an Aug. 6, 2001, presidential intelligence memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," which said there was evidence that al Qaeda operatives might be planning aircraft hijackings or attacks with explosives and that the FBI had about 70 active field investigations "that it considers bin Ladin-related."

Bush, speaking to reporters in Texas yesterday, said that the briefing contained no "actionable intelligence" about an "imminent attack" and that he was "comforted" by the description of the FBI's efforts.

"It meant the FBI was doing its job, the FBI was running down any lead," Bush said, adding that "had they found something, I'm confident they would have reported back to me. . . . That didn't happen."

Much of the questioning of Ashcroft and others today is expected to center on the summer of 2001, when the U.S. government was experiencing an unprecedented surge in intelligence information indicating plans for a terrorist attack by al Qaeda.

On Sept. 10 of that year, Ashcroft formally denied a $50 million request from the FBI to hire more counterterrorism agents and intelligence researchers, according to witnesses and Justice Department documents. Pickard, who took over as acting director after Freeh left in June 2001, has privately told the commission that he was frustrated by Ashcroft's lack of interest in terrorism, officials familiar with his remarks say.

Corallo dismissed Pickard's complaints and noted that when the Justice Department issued its final strategic plan after the attacks, terrorism was its top priority. "When people say [Ashcroft] seemed disinterested, that is not borne out by his actions," Corallo said. "He was beating on the FBI for information. . . . His actions speak a lot louder than whatever some of these folks had impressions of."

Commissioner Jamie S. Gorelick, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said at a hearing last week that FBI bulletins issued in this period were "feckless" and "don't tell anybody anything. They don't bring anyone to battle stations." She said that although Ashcroft was briefed on potential threats, "there was no evidence of any activity by him about this."

Gorelick said in an interview that she will refrain from asking questions of Reno, her former boss, or Freeh, with whom she worked closely, but will pose questions to Ashcroft and others.

In a sign that budget issues will be prominent in this week's testimony, Mueller also issued a statement yesterday defending Ashcroft's financial priorities.

"Since I became director of the FBI in September 2001, the Department of Justice and the attorney general have provided substantial support to FBI budget requests, including increases for our counterterrorism needs," said Mueller, who is scheduled to testify tomorrow.

But a budget document dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the White House slashed an emergency request for FBI counterterrorism funds by two-thirds and that Ashcroft, working within those limits, cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking, foreign-language intercepts and cybersecurity.

Freeh, echoing his 2002 testimony before the joint House-Senate inquiry, wrote in an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that "the FBI relentlessly did its job of pursuing terrorists" but was hobbled by insufficient funding. Although the bureau's counterterrorism budget had tripled by 1999, Freeh wrote, "it wasn't enough."

The former FBI director, who works at MBNA America in Wilmington, Del., said, "The political will to declare and fight this war [against terrorism] didn't exist before Sept. 11."

But Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a frequent FBI critic, released a Congressional Research Service study yesterday that he said casts doubt on Freeh's budgetary complaints. "Congress consistently granted the FBI huge amounts of money for its counterterrorism mission, often at levels more than the administration was requesting," Grassley wrote in a letter to Mueller.