John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear

Who needs terrorists when we have John Ashcroft to scare us out of our pants?

The way the attorney general detonated the “dirty bomber” case this week completes his metamorphosis from a common press hog to a genuine fear monger.

That Ashcroft insisted that he had to scoop all the other terror warriors (Mssrs. Mueller, Wolfowitz and Thompson) and make the announcement about Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir, in a panicky performance from Moscow shows what a camera-moth Ashcroft is.

That Ashcroft overstated the threat of the Padilla Plot and of “dirty bombs” as weapons of mass destruction, shows with egregious clarity how willing Ashcroft is to use scare-tactics to grab headlines, control the news agenda and make himself look good.

In his Monday statement, Ashcroft said, “In apprehending Al Muhajir as he sought entry into the United States, we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive ‘dirty bomb.’”

By Monday night, my colleague Jim Stewart, was reporting that FBI sources were “backing off” Ashcroft’s assertion that there was a specific, developed, real plan to use a “dirty bomb” in the U.S.

By Tuesday morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Administration’s hardest hard-liner, was telling CBS News that, “ I don’t think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and [Al Muhajir’s] coming in here obviously to plan further deeds.”

By Wednesday morning, White House sources were telling USA Today that Ashcroft had been chastised for overplaying the Padilla Plot.