Acting FBI Director Tom Pickard raised the concern of the threat of an al Qaeda attack in a July 5, 2001, meeting with Attorney General John Ashcroft. “Yet, Pickard testified to the 9/11 commission that when he tried to brief Ashcroft just a week later, on July 12 [2001], about the terror threat inside the United States, he got the brush-off. ‘Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore,’ Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste asked on April 13 [2004]. ‘Is that correct?’ ‘That is correct,’ Pickard replied.”
– Lisa Myers, “Did Ashcroft Brush off Terror Warnings?,” NBC News, June 22, 2004