[SunStar]

Ashcroft used to fly commercial, just as Janet Reno did. So why, two months before Sept. 11, did he start taking chartered government planes?

Because Ashcroft received personal death threats. But go ahead and make it part of your conspiracy theory. Why should the truth factor in to your "reporting"?

[Plummz]

Ashcroft demonstrated an amazing lack of curiosity when asked if he knew anything about the threat. "Frankly, I don't," he told reporters.

[DoughtyOne]

Has it ever occurred to you that every government official receives death threats?  That's about as bogus an excuse as I've ever heard.

On July 5, 2001, according to a recent Washington Post article, the White House called together officials from a dozen federal agencies to give them a warning.

"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," the officials were told by the government's top counterterrorism official,
Richard Clarke.

Clarke considered the threat sufficiently important to direct every counterintelligence office to cancel vacations and get ready for immediate action, the Post reported.

How do you explain this away?  If we knew something was about to take place, why didn't we have contingency plans to protect the capital from attack by air?

I'll admit to a little skepticism regarding some of the Bush and Ashcroft should have known statements, but there are aspects of this that simply defy logic.

[Allrightnow]

The FBI did advise Ashcroft to stay off commercial aircraft. The rest of us just had to take our chances.

The thread of rational behind this is if the Fed's were under the impression that a more conventional hijacking was likely to occur, Ashcroft's presence on the plane would be a gigantic feather in the cap of the hijackers. It's hard to imagine that he would not have been singled out by hijackers and used as an additional bargaining chip.