By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - John Ashcroft used his first interview as attorney general to attack Bill Clinton over the war on drugs and his pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.
In a television interview Wednesday night, the new attorney general said his top three goals were to increase gun prosecutions, reinvigorate the war on drugs and to stamp out racial discrimination.
He also looked back at some of former President Clinton's most controversial moves, including his pardon of Rich on his last day in office.
"A pardon should be reserved for a situation where there is a manifest sense of injustice," Ashcroft said Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live" program. "The American people are troubled whenever they think a pardon would be associated with political support or financial support."
Although expressing "surprise" with the pardon, Ashcroft nevertheless said the Constitution gives a president a "pretty unfettered right" to pardon anyone.
Clinton's pardon has been criticized because Rich has stayed in Switzerland rather than returning to face 51 counts of tax evasion and fraud filed against him in 1983.
In addition, the pardon was requested by his ex-wife, Denise, who has given Democrats about $1 million since 1993. Clinton has denied any political or financial motivation.
The new attorney general also blamed Clinton in part for a rise in marijuana use during the 1990s. In the 1992 campaign, Clinton said he once had smoked marijuana, but didn't inhale. He later told an MTV town forum that if he had to do it again, he would inhale "if I could - I tried before."
"I think that sends the wrong signal," Ashcroft said. "It's so important you have a president who will speak forcefully against drug use, rather than wink and give the nod in some sense saying, 'I didn't inhale, but I wish I had.'"
Ashcroft said he and President Bush want to "concentrate on educating children away from drugs."
Listing his three top priorities, Ashcroft said, "I want to stop gun violence, to reinvigorate the war on drugs, to end discrimination wherever I find it."
He particularly mentioned enforcing voting rights, fair housing laws and putting a stop to racial profiling by police. "It's wrong for police to stop people based on race."
After his civil rights record was bitterly attacked during a stormy Senate confirmation battle, Ashcroft is inviting Justice Department's civil rights division officials to a brown bag lunch in his private department dining room next week, chief spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said. Civil rights will be first, but he plans to hold these lunches with each division.
With every news organization clamoring to talk to him, Ashcroft unveiled his priorities in an interview with King, known for polite questioning rather than hostile cross-examination.
Ashcroft has three main civil rights issues in mind, Tucker said.
"He wants to make sure no American feels outside the protection of the law," she said. "He wants to make sure all people have access and that no voting rights are violated."
This includes the department's ongoing investigation of the presidential election in Florida, where black voters have complained they were systematically turned away from the polls, but also reports of ballot access problems and voting fraud in other locations, she said.
He also wants to "take a serious look at hate crimes," Tucker said. He previously opposed legislation backed by the Clinton administration to expand the federal hate crimes law to cover attacks on homosexuals and to remove a requirement that a federally protected right be involved, which has been an obstacle to some prosecutions.
One of the biggest backers of that legislation, Ashcroft's predecessor Janet Reno, flew from her home in Florida to have lunch yesterday with Ashcroft in his private dining room.
When Ashcroft told reporters how much he appreciated the chance to confer with the nation's longest-serving attorney general, Reno promptly corrected him, noting her eight years were second to the 11 served by William Wirt. "I told you I could learn things from her," Ashcroft remarked.
Reno was asked if she agreed with the Rich pardon but ducked the question. "I don't do things on Thursday any more," she replied in a reference to no longer holding her weekly Thursday news conference. Ashcroft roared with laughter.
In an effort to reduce the incidence of gun crimes, Ashcroft said he wants to expand a federal antigun effort used in Virginia known as Project Exile. Under the project, federal prosecutors handle most gun crimes and seek stiff sentences. The National Rifle Association strongly backs the program.
"There has been a lack of gun prosecutions in recent years," Tucker said, echoing a recent Republican criticism of the Clinton administration.
Reno's aides acknowledged that federal gun prosecutions dropped for two years during the mid-1990s as they focused federal efforts on the biggest gun traffickers and referred smaller cases to local prosecutors. Combined federal and state gun prosecutions rose through the 1990s. The federal prosecutors also handled gun cases in states where federal statutes were tougher than state gun laws. And federal gun prosecutions rose for the final few years of the Clinton administration.
