Attorney General Ashcroft's Remarks at the American Society of Newspaper Editors Luncheon

(Excerpts)

Well, I am delighted for this opportunity to speak with you. I want to say that I've just been at the Justice Department for two months now. That does not make me an expert when you realize what the Justice Department entails. It reminds me constantly that I have a lot to learn. I have 125,000 employees at the Justice Department, in INS and in the FBI and in the DEA, and the alphabet soup of Washington finds its recipe in large measure in the Justice Department. But I have begun to set what I believe is a clear agenda for the department based on President Bush's priorities and priorities which I totally share.

Thirdly, I think it's important that for a law to be the kind of influence in the culture, all members in the culture have tobelieve that the law is designed to protect them. All members of the culture have to understand that the law can reach them if they violate the law. And when people think about the law as being a category in which certain individuals are favored, we have a very serious problem, because the law instead of becoming a friend to all is an agency favors some. Now, I've launched an initiative at insuring the enforcement of civil rights including especially targeting voting rights, and I've asked that there be new attorneys assigned to the Civil Rights Division. We have assigned eight new attorneys to the Civil Rights Division to help states with election law reform, to help states in localities with election monitoring, to ensure that voting rights are not being denied or defrauded.

Now, simply in the area of civil rights relating to voting, are these key components: Access to the ballot and the integrity of the ballot.

Anytime the integrity of the ballot is interfered with, people are denied their right to vote, and anytime access to the voting place, obviously, is interfered with, the civil rights of citizens have been interrupted and in a way that simply cannot betolerated.

I've also begun work on the issue of racial profiling. This was a concern of mine in the United States Senate. Of recentcampaign finance reform fame, Russ Feingold, the senator from the state of Wisconsin, he and I conducted hearings on racial profiling -- the first hearings in the United States Senate -- for citizens who have committed no crime, have been stopped only because of their race. I believe that undermines and erodes their ability to have confidence in the legal system and to participate constructively in that legal system.

Too often -- and incidentally, any incidents make the incidence too often -- people have been stopped for "driving while black," rather than having made some infraction, and it's time for us to put an end to treating people based on their race and to apprehending them or otherwise asking them to encounter the law enforcement community in a way which is disrespectful merely because they are not of one race or another.

The Justice Department, of course, is undertaking a review of all federal law enforcement agencies and policies with regard to race, to make sure that we don't inappropriately deal with people based on their race. It's unacceptable for the federal government to do so. I think it's wrong for any government to do so. I believe it to be a breach of the constitutional rights of individuals if they are interfered with or otherwise treated in a way which singles them out because of their race.

I have asked the Congress, and the president of the United States, I think, is eager to work in this respect to fund the kind of study that would be appropriate for state and local governments to assess what's happened and what the situation is in regard to the potentials and the existence and practices that might relate to profiling at the state and local level. Obviously, at the federal level, I am taking action to review all of our policies, and those include policies related to training, discipline, the correction of any instance or circumstances in which there is illegal, inappropriate racial profiling.

For each of these three priorities -- reducing gun crime; making sure that we, again, target illegal drug use as a real threat to the security of our culture; and to making sure that we eliminate discrimination -- we are taking action in order to achieve, I think, a real benefit to this culture.

But one of the things that I profoundly understand is that America is much bigger than the American government, and that if we ever achieve the kind of success we want as a culture, it won't be only because we have the right laws; it'll be because we go beyond the laws to the citizenry to have -- and to exercise responsibility in ways that are very helpful and constructive.

Now, this may tell you something about the deep intellect which resides between my ears, but one day I was -- I don't know why -- rethinking the little jingle from the nursery rhyme, "Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again."

And I thought to myself, "Hmm."

And I think I said it over again and with the emPHA'sis on the wrong sylLA'ble, if you will forgive me. "Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; all the KING's horses and all the KING's men couldn't put Humpty together again." And it dawned on me that this is not a statement that we can never repair or remediate the pathologies that attend and follow calamity, but it's just that the KING's horses and KING's men may not be able to do it themselves, to bring that into the modern era. It may well be that Humpty Dumpty needs repair and that the government resources aren't enough to repair the culture by themselves, but that we need to elicit the help and the participation of the entirety of the culture, not just the government of the culture.

And one of the things that's so profoundly inspiring about this president is that he sees the cultural assets and the remedial assets for America as being the assets contained in the culture, not just the assets contained in the government. Witness his willingness to elicit, encourage and otherwise elevate those who would remediate pathologies in our culture who are outsidegovernment, his faith-based initiatives program and the like. It says we need to welcome every quarter of response that can somehow improve our standing.

Similarly, I think, when it comes to the issues of the Justice Department, we have to understand that law enforcement, personal security, integrity, equity, compassion, the abolition of discrimination is far too important to expect to achieve it all in the Justice Department alone. We have to be -- those who believe that the KING's horses and KING's men probably can't get it done alone, but we have to elicit the participation and help of a lot of others.

Justice is the business of all of us. As citizens of this great nation, I hope -- and as newspaper editors and opinion leaders of this great nation, I hope that you will think about ways in which you can join in our effort to have the kinds of communities that allow individuals to grow up and reach maturity and live lives in dignity and respect, and that's free from discrimination, free from the threat of violence, and free so that individuals, when they reach maturity, and after the young people have left school, that they can make the kind of contribution that will improve the culture in which we live.

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be with you today. (Applause.)

MODERATOR: Thank you very much, General.

The attorney general has agreed to take a few questions. He said he'd take a few; he's not quite sure he'd answer them. (Laughter.) But we'll give him a shot.

Only ASNE members may ask questions. If you'll go to the microphones, and when you're called on, please state your name and your newspaper.

MODERATOR: A question here.

Q Hi. I'm David Levine (sp), editor of the Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

ATTY GEN. ASHCROFT: Is that of the great Johnstown flood?

Q Yes, it sure is.

ATTY GEN. ASHCROFT: Oh, my goodness. Never mind.

Q Mr. Ashcroft, in the last couple of years, we've had two reported incidents of racial profiling in our community, and a number of members of our black community have said it happened it a lot more but they've never reported it. In response, our newspaper has editorially called for a federal investigation, and indeed the local FBI said they are currently conducting one. Actually, they told us that a little more than a year ago, and there's been no reports.

I've heard similar incidents around the country. I'm wondering if you're going to become a lot more aggressive in overseeing these. And also, can you tell us what might have happened to that Johnstown investigation?

ATTY GEN. ASHCROFT: Well, frankly, I can't comment on that investigation. I don't know about it.

And frankly, if I did know about it, while it was pending as an investigation I probably wouldn't be able to respond to it.

You know, sometimes congressional hearings may seen like mind- numbing, boring settings. But I agreed to hold a hearing on racial profiling, and an Army sergeant who had probably spent I think 13 or so years defending America told a rather heart-rending story about how he tried to drive through one of our Midwestern states, taking his son to a family reunion, and was stopped twice in one day. The car was virtually disassembled on two separate occasions, and he had no infractions. And I thought to myself, this is wrong.

And the question about will I be more active in this respect and do I want this as a priority to end this, I certainly do. I believe first of all that it is wrong for a government to differentiate people based on race. I believe to discriminate based on race is against the United States Constitution. And on that basis we're going to do whatever we can to find any places that it exists or any policies that might move and tilt in that direction. And we're going to try to train so that we don't have that happen. And we'll try to discipline so that it can't happen and take what action is necessary to eradicate it from the federal system.

We've asked for the study to be conducted among state and local jurisdictions because we would like for state andlocal jurisdictions to become aware and to cooperate with them in whatever way possible we can to avoid and to eliminate this kind of discrimination. There are matters that are ongoing that as a result of examinations in terms of police departments called pattern and practice investigations that relate to certain of our laws, and those are ongoing in a number of American cities in which the Justice Department has acted specifically to try and remediate the threat to individual liberties that comes as a result of discrimination.