From
this story from tomorrow's NYT:
Draft reports by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks portray Attorney General John Ashcroft as largely uninterested in counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11 despite intelligence warnings that summer that Al Qaeda was planning a large, perhaps catastrophic, terrorist attack, panel officials and others with access to the reports have said.
I personally haven't caught any of his testimony, but could this be the start of a plan to shift/plant the blame on the shoulders of Johnny, and thereby direct it away from Bush? Although Ashcroft is the doyenne of the religious right (a market the Administration can't afford to ignore), he's a pretty reviled figure everywhere else.