FROM ELECTION LOSS, ASHCROFT GOES TO TOP IN ANTITERROR CAMPAIGN

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 -- "For every crucifixion," John Ashcroft likes to
say, "a resurrection is waiting to follow," and, more than most people
in Washington, he should know.

Just a year ago, Mr. Ashcroft's future looked grim. He had lost his
Senate seat after a single term -- to a dead man. He was not close to
George W. Bush, whose own election was not yet assured. He was not Mr.
Bush's first choice for attorney general, and when offered the job, he
had to endure a bruising confirmation at the hands of his old Senate
colleagues.

But since Sept. 11, Mr. Ashcroft has emerged as perhaps the most
powerful attorney general of modern times, rivaling his ideological
opposite Robert F. Kennedy, despite a relationship with his president
that aides to both say remains more professional than personal.
Working seven days a week at the center of the Bush administration's
antiterrorism campaign, Mr. Ashcroft has moved swiftly -- and sometimes
unilaterally -- to expand the government's powers to wiretap and detain
terrorism suspects and monitor their conversations with their lawyers.

"We frankly go to bed every night asking ourselves, 'Have we done
everything we can to protect the liberty and freedom and security of
our citizenry?' " Mr. Ashcroft said in a telephone interview on
Friday. He added, "I don't know when 19 individuals have killed more
people at any time in history, but it demonstrates that the risks are
extremely high."

For weeks, Mr. Ashcroft has been in the thick of the war, from the
issuance of the order signed by Mr. Bush to prosecute foreign
nationals accused of terrorism in extraordinary military tribunals, to
day-to-day operations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He has
been an almost constant presence at the bureau's command center and,
with the bureau director, Robert S. Mueller III, has personally
directed the investigations in the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks.

New Course on Legal Policy

And, even while immersed in the two-front war on terrorism, he has
set a new course on other legal policy, beginning a crackdown on the
distribution of marijuana for medical purposes in California and
threatening the licenses of doctors who prescribe drugs to help
patients end their lives under the terms of the assisted-suicide law
twice approved by the voters of Oregon.

In the process Mr. Ashcroft, 59, has become not only one of the most
activist officials in the history of the Justice Department but also a
target for a growing group of critics in both parties who contend that
some of the administration's tactics in its war on international
terrorism risk threatening civil liberties at home.

"I don't know whether there's a panic," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy,
the Vermont Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee, "but there's
such a sense of concern, either at the Justice Department or at the
White House, that they feel they've got to start acting arbitrarily,
trying things that have never been tried before."

Mr. Leahy, with his Republican colleague Senator Orrin G. Hatch of
Utah, has summoned Mr. Ashcroft to a hearing after Thanksgiving to
explain some of his recent antiterrorism moves. "I don't know anybody
on the Hill who feels that some of these things have done anything
that has increased our security," Mr. Leahy added.

Mr. Ashcroft insists he has acted in accordance with his legal powers
and the Constitution to combat new and troubling threats.

"As we believe steps are available for us to take that are within the
statutory authority," he said, "and within the Constitution and the
framework of liberties, which we are all responsible for protecting,
we're going to adapt our procedures and processes to maximize the
security of the American people and reduce the danger of these kinds
of terrorist attacks."

The deeply conservative son and grandson of evangelical Christian
preachers, a man so punctilious that he likes to bake chocolate chip
cookies uniform enough to be stacked in Pringles potato chip cans, Mr.
Ashcroft has told friends that the terrorist attacks amount to a call
he cannot shirk. He certainly cannot avoid the spotlight of as many as
10 televised interviews in a single day, or a "Saturday Night Live"
lampoon in which Darryl Hammond mimicked his public exhortations to
"live your lives as normal, just be strong and just be vigilant, just
be confident."

In a public career that began with a failed Republican primary
campaign for Congress from his home state of Missouri in 1972 and
eventually led to two terms as state attorney general and two terms as
governor before his election to the Senate in 1994, Mr. Ashcroft has
often felt underestimated, friends say. But his family likes to joke
that he is the proverbial man who falls into a sewer and comes out
with a ham sandwich: always turning his troubles to his advantage.

Loyalty Pays Off

Two years ago, he explored a run for the White House, hoping to
galvanize conservative Republicans. He decided against running to
concentrate on his re-election to the Senate (and endorse Mr. Bush),
but lost in a strange race. Mr. Ashcroft's opponent, Gov. Mel
Carnahan, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the election, yet
narrowly won after Missouri's governor promised to appoint Mr.
Carnahan's widow, Jean, to his seat. But the presidential dream dies
hard, and Mr. Ashcroft's current post could give him a powerful
platform for the future if he succeeds.

White House aides recall that Mr. Ashcroft was among the last diehard
loyalists of President Bush's father in his losing 1992 campaign,
which counts for much in the family councils, and that he has the
current president's clear respect. "He's considered by everyone to be
a star player, even when there are disagreements," one Bush aide said.

Mr. Ashcroft's good friend Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona said: "He's a
very humble person. I know he may not always come across that way, but
he is. He's always very much in control, and somebody who doesn't know
him might get the impression from seeing him on TV that he was
arrogant but he isn't."

In a city often celebrated for its vices, Mr. Ashcroft neither smokes
nor drinks. His idea of a good time is a big bowl of ice cream (any
flavor), playing the piano or singing baritone on gospel hymns. His
inspirational memoir, "On My Honor," was republished this year by
Thomas Nelson Inc., a major religious publishing house. Nelson
originally published the book in 1998 under the title, "Lessons From a
Father to His Son." No. 9 on Mr. Ashcroft's list of 20 "Beliefs that
shape my life" is this: "The verdict of history is inconsequential;
the verdict of eternity is what counts."

But aides and friends also attest to his sense of humor and say he is
not above puncturing tense meetings at the Justice Department with his
imitation of Montgomery Burns, the misanthropic nuclear power plant
owner on "The Simpsons."

His critics insist he lacks the temperament to administer the nation's
laws impartially.

"These last three weeks reflect what John Ashcroft has been about for
the past three decades," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for
the American Way, the liberal advocacy group. "It's absolutely
chilling to see the person entrusted with enforcing our laws and
defending our civil liberties showing so little concern for the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights."

Mr. Ashcroft had expected a confirmation battle in the Senate. But he
did not expect the bitter, unrelenting personal assault by former
colleagues, his associates said. Through the hearings his face was a
mask of stoic calm. But friends said that in private he was shocked
and deeply wounded by the ferocity of the assault. Democratic senators
questioned Mr. Ashcroft sharply about his views on abortion, gun
control, voting rights and especially over his derailment of the
appointment to a federal judgeship of the first black member of the
Missouri Supreme Court, whom Mr. Ashcroft had called "pro-criminal."
Mr. Ashcroft said he had been deeply troubled by several of the
judge's opinions. In the early months of his tenure Mr. Ashcroft kept
a low profile as he learned his way around the huge Department with
more than 100,000 employees.

Through the summer, in a series of steps, Mr. Ashcroft began to
redefine the department in ways that friends and detractors each said
were consistent with their perceptions of his conservatism.

In May, Mr. Ashcroft sent a letter to the National Rifle Association
expressing his view that the Second Amendment protects an individual's
right to own guns -- a departure from prevailing thinking of the
Clinton administration and a strong signal of support for a firearms
group that had fought gun control.

In June, Mr. Ashcroft took the first step to settle the department's
multibillion-dollar civil lawsuit against the tobacco industry, a
sharp turn from the policy of the Clinton administration, which had
filed the suit in 1999, seeking to recover more than $20 billion in
federal health care costs of Medicare patients, veterans and federal
employees, attributed to ills from smoking.

Mr. Ashcroft also concluded that there was no intentional racial or
ethnic bias in federal death penalty cases despite a Justice
Department study last year that found substantial racial disparities
in federal death sentences.

But the events of Sept. 11 began what Mr. Ashcroft's associates regard
as the beginning of his second term as attorney general, as the
hijackings, the possibility of more attacks and the new threat of
bioterrorism thrust Mr. Ashcroft into a central role in the Bush
administration.

On the morning of the attacks, Mr. Ashcroft was aboard a government
jet high above Wisconsin dairy farms, en route to a public appearance
in Milwaukee. His secure phone rang aboard the Cessna Citation V, and
Mr. Ashcroft scribbled notes as he talked, then hung up and told
aides, "This will change the world as we know it."

In the weeks since, Mr. Ashcroft has been among the chief proponents
of change, asserting that the country's law enforcement and
counterterrorism agencies must shift to a wartime footing to prevent
further attacks with steps that have enraged civil liberties groups.

A senior aide said that Mr. Ashcroft regarded himself as a civil
libertarian, but one who believes that war forces the government to
take aggressive steps to protect civil liberties. Senator Kyl also
said Mr. Ashcroft had a "strong civil libertarian bent" on issues like
Internet privacy and a wariness of government power.

"When he establishes something that grants government power, I know
that he's thought it through very carefully," Mr. Kyl said. "He's very
well balanced. He's not going to let the extraordinary pressure of
this unbalance him to make him something that he's not"

To defuse criticism of his record on civil liberties, Mr. Ashcroft
likes to note that as chairman of the constitution subcommittee of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, he held hearings on racial profiling and
as attorney general he has said he would work to end it.

Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who requested the
hearings, said Mr. Ashcroft "seemed moved by some of the testimony and
he indicated he would at least in theory be interested in taking
legislative action."

But, Mr. Feingold said, "he did not back that up with any action in
the Senate at all."

The only member of the Senate to vote against the administration's
broad antiterrorism bill, Mr. Feingold said he has been troubled by
Mr. Ashcroft's failure to provide an explanation of the hundreds of
people arrested who have not been identified. Many have been released,
but some remain in custody as material witnesses who could be charged
with crimes.

Mr. Ashcroft has also ordered vast overhauls of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the
Justice Department itself. Each step has been labeled an effort to
combat terrorism, but some, like the reorganization of the immigration
service, are long-debated ideas.

He permitted the authorities to eavesdrop on conversations between
lawyers and some people in federal custody who are suspected of
terrorism. Justice Department officials said such eavesdropping is
being used against only 13 unidentified federal prisoners convicted of
terrorist acts.

Defying Some in F.B.I.

Under Mr. Ashcroft's direction, the authorities have compiled a list
of more than 5,000 foreign men living in the United States legally on
business, tourist or student visas. The men, mainly from Middle
Eastern countries, are being sought for voluntary interviews as
possible witnesses who might have information about terrorist operations.

Mr. Ashcroft has issued warnings of new terrorist threats, based on
vague but credible intelligence information, overruling some reluctant
F.B.I. officials. No new attacks occurred, but associates said that he
felt the threats could not be withheld.

"The risks have never been at this scale in American history," Mr.
Ashcroft said.

He disagreed with critics, including those in the administration, who
have complained that the warnings ratcheted up the fear about attacks
without providing specific advice or information about how to respond.

"The worst decision we could make is to believe that this could never
happen again and to not count on the possibility of additional acts of
terrorism and elevate the risk," he said.

"One of the lessons of this whole thing is how reliant we are on each
other," Mr. Ashcroft added. "We have to trust the American people with
that information if you believe it's credible. We have to rely on
American people and people have to rely on each other."