Ashcroft On The Spot

The Attorney General copes with FBI bungling and missteps of his own

I'm not really a good person to be asking 'How do you feel' questions of," John Ashcroft said with an uneasy chuckle. "I feel like...doing my job."

Maybe he's better off that way. If he were given to emoting, the Attorney General might be sounding low, if only because his 15 weeks in office have seen two colossal FBI embarrassments: the revelation that accused Russian spy Robert Hanssen operated inside the bureau for 15 years; and the discovery of thousands of pages of undisclosed documents in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, which rescued the convict at the brink...

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