Safire is a former speechwriter for Nixon, and a very, very bright guy. (We should all be allowed our blind spots, and his is that he's very conservative.)

Times columnist William Safire

"Under the police powers it operated under last year, and with the lawful cooperation of a better-managed C.I.A., an efficiently run F.B.I. might well have prevented the catastrophe of Sept. 11. . . .

"To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft – working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director 'J. Edgar' Mueller III – has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.

"They have done this deed by executive fiat: no public discussion, no Congressional action, no judicial guidance. If we had only had these new powers last year, goes their posterior-covering pretense, we could have stopped terrorism cold. Not so. They had the power to collect the intelligence, but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected."