By Gary McCullough
Most Washington insiders think Ashcroft will be confirmed as our Attorney General, so why is the fringe left being so aggressive in their attacks?
I have a theory. And one that is at minimum–entertaining.
I believe the far left fears Ashcroft because Janet Reno was so often used to promote a political agenda. She was part of a cover-up or campaign-to-demonize so often that many Americans may have come to accept such actions as part of the role of United States Attorney General. If true, perhaps they should fear a pro-life, conservative, Christian in such a powerful position.
Janet Reno exercised her personal contempt for people of faith throughout her tenure. Her inability to separate her disdain for people of faith from her responsibility to enforce the nation’s laws exacerbated tragedies in Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Let me tell you something about Janet Reno’s first few days on the job back in March of 1993.
I had become acquainted with a US Marshall who was assigned to keep tabs on pro-life activist groups like Operation Rescue. He had spent a great deal of time with individual activists and viewed them as a grass-roots movement and not some vast conspiracy of militias operating in cell-groups.
Shortly after Reno was sworn in, she held a meeting with my US Marshall friend and several others. During the meeting Reno said that she saw Operation Rescue as a well organized, centrally commanded domestic terrorist group. Later during the meeting one law-enforcement officer told Reno that his experience showed “Operation Rescue was not that well organized, but rather a bunch of people who came together for events.” Reno responded by berated the officer and saying, “this kind of an attitude is the problem!” My US Marshall friend told me, “Her message was clear; treat pro-lifers like terrorists or you will be out of a job.”
And true to her beliefs, Reno went after pro-lifers using the full weight of the Justice Department. She spent over a million dollars and wasted the time of countless FBI and ATF officers pursuing her “Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy (VAAP-Con).” In the end, her misuse of the Justice Department resulted in finding no evidence of a conspiracy and had FBI agents jokingly refer to her witch-hunt as CRAP-Con.
This past July, NY Post Reporter Rod Dreher wrote about VAAP-Con, “After several months monitoring pro-lifers’ mail, phone calls and activities and failing to find a plot, the FBI wanted to drop it. But Justice Department officials insisted they keep going. VAAPCON dragged on another year, ending after 16 months with no conspiracy detected. According to sources and published reports, numerous FBI agents felt that abortion-rights supporters in the attorney general’s office crossed an ethical line out of eagerness to damage the pro-life movement. ‘The [FBI] people who were running the abortion investigations were very solid and thoroughly disgusted by efforts to use the agency this way,’ The Post source said. ‘They wanted to go after pro-life groups as domestic terrorist organizations. The bureau resisted,’ said the source. ‘That’s the way they look at the world: Anybody who opposes us is a potential domestic terrorist.'”
But what Reno did was not only a waste of law-enforcement resources and the taxpayers’ money. She illegally spied on American citizens based on their beliefs. Dateline reported, “The FBI, ATF, U.S. Postal Inspection, and U.S. Marshalls, along with other Federal agencies, have been compiling dossiers on such notorious terrorist organizations as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (oh, those bomb-toting Bishops!) and the National Women’s Coalition for Life.”
This is the kind of behavior we expected from the defunct KGB not the United States DOJ! Then she lied to Congress about the files.
I am sure there are more similar stories. Perhaps from the friends of Elian Gonzalez, or the guy who came up with the bumper sticker: IS YOUR CHURCH ATF APPROVED.
Perhaps this is why a few far-left organizations are so upset about the nomination of Ashcroft. They fully expect the Bush Administration to continue to abuse the post of Attorney General, and refocus the Justice Department’s resources upon them.
What if the Justice Department investigated Patricia Ireland’s seedy side, or Hand Gun Control Inc.’s fundraising practices. What if Ashcroft exposed the true numbers behind the “Million Moms.” Oh my!
But such speculation flies in the face of the “Christian” part of who Ashcroft is. In a book by Ashcroft he says, “It is against my religion to impose religion on people.”
Every public servant brings his or her beliefs into the decisions they make. Janet Reno and her boss operated on the belief that what you do isn’t illegal if you don’t get caught. And if you do get caught, check the polls before you admit anything. That is a very popular religion these days.
Ashcroft’s religion may not be as popular, but it will constrain him to do the job of our nation’s top cop without the politicizing that the left has come to expect.