WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (AFP) - US Attorney General John Ashcroft, who resigned Tuesday, was already a controversial figure when deadly terrorist attacks on the United States put him in the spotlight.
Ashcroft, 62, has made growing signs in recent months that he would not serve in a new administration. He was hospitalised with pancreatitis earlier this year.
In an implicit knock at critics, Ashcroft wrote in his resignation letter that "Americans have been spared the violence and savagery of terrorist attack on our soil since September 11. 2001," and celebrated that "during the last four years, our violent crime rate has plunged to a 30-year low."
Ashcroft, a former senator from Missouri, had the dubious distinction of losing a re-election bid in 2000 to a dead man, former state governor Mel Carnahan who was killed in a plane crash during the campaign and succeeded by his lieutenant governor.
President George W. Bush later named Ashcroft to head the Justice Department, and he won US Senate confirmation 58-42 in February 2001 after contentious hearings in which his commitment to civil rights was questioned.
Ashcroft, a conservative Christian whose father was a clergyman, stunned Democrats in 2000 by leading a campaign to derail the nomination of black Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White to the federal bench.
He also raised liberal hackles in 1999, when he accepted an honorary degree from South Carolina's Bob Jones University, an institution that until recently banned interracial dating.
Ashcroft's strong opposition to abortion and support of gun ownership has also led to an uneasy relationship between his Justice Department and many liberals. Among his first acts as attorney general was to institute daily prayer meetings at department headquarters.
In his first official news conference as attorney general, Ashcroft said his main priorities would be to fight discrimination, violence and drug use, particularly among young people.
But his focus quickly changed to fighting terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
He is a fierce advocate of the USA Patriot Act, legislation passed after the attacks to combat terrorism, and had been pushing for its extension, saying hundreds of arrests have resulted from the measures.
The act however has been fiercely criticized by civil rights activists, who say it infringes upon freedoms cherished by Americans.
Under Ashcroft, the Justice Department aggressively went after suspected terrorists, sometimes committing embarrassing missteps and drawing fire for holding US citizens as "enemy combatants" without charge.
The Justice Department, however, also pursued those suspected of hate crimes against Muslims in the wake of the attacks.
Ashcroft's management of the department led to several tangles with his former Democratic colleagues in the Senate, most notably in June, when he refused to give lawmakers copies of a Justice Department memo that allegedly advised the White House that torture could be justified during terrorism interrogations.
The attorney general also faced off against the commission investigating the September 11 attacks. Under fire for his counter-terrorism efforts prior to the attacks, Ashcroft blamed the administration of former president Bill Clinton, saying "the old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail."
11/10/2004 00:43 GMT - AFP