John Ashcroft

Former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Thursday disavowed the legal reasoning once used to justify coercive interrogations of terrorism suspects, but defended White House officials who pressured him while he was hospitalized four years ago to approve terrorist surveillance programs. At the heart of the four-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee was whether U.S.

The Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's challenge to the nation's only right-to-die law Tuesday, ruling that then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft had overstepped his authority when he sought to punish Oregon doctors who helped terminally ill patients end their lives. The 6-3 decision was a victory for states and their independent-minded voters, and a defeat for social conservatives. The case also showed Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Five years after Muslim immigrants were abused in a federal jail here, the guards who beat them and the Washington policymakers who decided to hold them for months without charges are being called to account. Some 1,200 Middle Eastern men were arrested on suspicion of terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. No holding place was so notorious as Brooklyn's nine-story Metropolitan Detention Center.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is the last enemy combatant imprisoned in this country. Yet four years after his arrest, government officials still cannot agree on what threat he posed. In a new allegation, former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft says Al-Marri was sent to the United States a day before the Sept. 11 attacks to plan strikes on West Coast targets, including the tallest building in Los Angeles. Ashcroft's claim -- made in a new book -- is the first time any U.S.

Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens in the fevered wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by ordering arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause, a federal appeals court said in a scathing opinion Friday. In a ruling that said Ashcroft could be sued for prosecutorial abuses, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former attorney general immunity from liability for how he used the material witness warrants in national security investigations.

Re "Tainted justice," Opinion, June 28 Bruce J. Einhorn is incorrect in one respect. It was not John Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales alone, as attorneys general, who established the hiring policy at the Department of Justice, but rather it was under the direction of their boss. Clearly, President Bush himself has tainted the department by requiring politically-based hirings in areas that have been historically apolitical. To write an opinion article that doesn't mention our president in this matter is not fully accurate or reasonable, despite such an article being otherwise correct in its condemnation.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Monday thanked employees in the Justice Department he had led for four years for their efforts to prevent another terrorist attack. "There seems to be a record of achievement that you have generated that far exceeds what we would have anticipated without 9/11, in spite of this demand that we invest so many resources in the fight against terror," Ashcroft said at a farewell ceremony. "There is no limit to what can be achieved when we work together in harmony and unity."

Departing Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, warning Tuesday that a recent Supreme Court decision could lead to more lenient treatment of violent offenders, called on Congress to enact tougher federal sentencing guidelines. Ashcroft, who is to leave office once his replacement is approved by the Senate -- probably Thursday -- also said his greatest regret as the nation's highest law enforcement officer for the last four years was not adequately explaining the Patriot Act to the American people.

A Syrian-born Canadian sued U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Thursday for deporting him to Syria as an Al Qaeda suspect and said government officials knew he would be tortured in a Damascus jail. The lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court is the latest development in a case that has strained relations between the United States and Canada, raised security and human rights issues and led to a new deportation deal between Ottawa and Washington.

U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was hospitalized in intensive care Friday, suffering from a painful but treatable abdominal condition that aides said would keep him there at least several days. Ashcroft, 61, was admitted to George Washington University Hospital on Thursday night and diagnosed with "a severe case" of gallstone pancreatitis, the Justice Department said.