Ashcroft Answers Critics, and Draws More Fire

Attorney general nominee John Ashcroft on Friday sought to clarify his controversial positions on issues ranging from abortion to affirmative action, but his responses to written questions only drew more accusations from Democrats that he was being evasive and unresponsive.

Ashcroft spent much of the week preparing written answers to more than 350 questions from Democratic senators, many of whom have expressed serious concerns about whether he should be confirmed as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

As the rhetoric surrounding Ashcroft’s nomination has become more intense, Republicans have charged that Democrats are using the barrage of questions to delay his ultimate confirmation. Democrats have countered that Ashcroft’s answers present a critical opportunity to determine whether he is fit for the job of attorney general.

His answers, said Democrats, were disappointing.

“The refusal to provide substantive answers is another fact that senators will have to take into account in deciding how they will vote,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to vote Wednesday on Ashcroft’s nomination. “I will say that if President Clinton or a Clinton nominee had provided these answers, some Republicans would be calling for a subpoena.”

He Avoids Being Specific on Issues

In response to question after question raised by Democrats, Ashcroft refused to be pinned down on specific positions, saying that it would not be wise to prejudge issues and cases that he would confront as attorney general.

Asked, for instance, whether he believes that abortion is appropriate if the mother’s life is in danger, he did not answer directly.

“My personal views on abortion are well known,” Ashcroft wrote. “I understand the difference between the role of a policy advocate and the role of a law enforcer. As attorney general, I will fully enforce all federal laws on this issue.”

That was Ashcroft’s mantra not only on abortion but also on many other issues, including affirmative action, civil rights and antitrust law.

Ashcroft repeated his belief that Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to seek an abortion, is the “settled law of the land.” And he used even stronger language than in past statements in declaring that Roe and a later Supreme Court case “make plain that women have a constitutional right to an abortion.”

In some instances, however, Ashcroft appeared to back away somewhat from stances he had taken in two days of testimony before the panel earlier this month.

For instance, on the question of the Justice Department’s multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the tobacco industry--a landmark suit that many observers believe the Bush administration wants to kill--Ashcroft was noncommittal.

When the issue was raised in his appearance before the committee on Jan. 17, Ashcroft declared that he was “no friend of the tobacco industry” and said that, if confirmed, “I have no predisposition to dismiss that suit.”

He made no such assurance, however, in response to numerous written questions about the closely watched tobacco lawsuit.

Instead, he promised that he would study the issue carefully and fairly and would consult with Justice Department attorneys about what he termed “a serious issue.” But he added that he did not want to risk “prejudging pending litigation.”

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) noted in a written question that the Bush administration wants to “abandon this lawsuit in midstream” and asked Ashcroft if he was committed to reviewing the merits of the case.

Ashcroft responded: “Clearly it would be irresponsible of me as attorney general to change course on a major piece of ongoing litigation without fully reviewing it and being briefed by the staff.”

Matt Myers, head of the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that Ashcroft’s responses were so carefully worded that they provide little insight about which way he would go.

“The questions that were raised before these answers were delivered remain after they were delivered,” Myers said in an interview.

Letter Pointing to Contradiction Cited

Some Democrats suggested that Ashcroft had become more noncommittal on the tobacco issue in the week since his testimony because of a letter that surfaced just this week that appeared to contradict his earlier testimony.

In the letter written last August, then-Sen. Ashcroft told a Missouri constituent who represented a coalition of tobacco-control groups that he opposed the federal tobacco lawsuit. He said he did not think it would help to fight teen smoking and that it “could set an unwise precedent leading to the federal government filing lawsuits against countless other legal industries.”

Leahy said he was bothered by apparent inconsistencies in Ashcroft’s written responses and by the fact that other answers were “simply nonresponsive.”

The senator said he was also disappointed that Ashcroft had passed up the chance to disavow controversies that had tainted his record. In response to several questions, Leahy noted, Ashcroft did not seek to distance himself from a magazine that has been accused of promoting neo-Confederacy ideas, nor did he disavow his statement that James S. Brady--the press secretary wounded in the 1981 attempted assassination of President Reagan--was “the leading enemy” of gun owners because of his support for gun control policies.

But Mindy Tucker, an Ashcroft representative, said that Leahy’s charges are baseless and that Leahy is the one who is being “nonresponsive to the facts” regarding Ashcroft’s answers.

“After two days of testimony and more than 400 questions, these theatrics are very disappointing,” Tucker said.

Ashcroft’s truthfulness in his testimony before the committee has come under attack in recent days in the wake of accusations that the former senator lied about why he opposed the ambassadorial nomination of a gay San Francisco man and about whether he had ever asked a job applicant about his sexual orientation.

But Tucker said that Ashcroft’s testimony was completely accurate and consistent with the written answers he provided to the committee.