U-S Attorney General John Ashcroft visited Des Moines Wednesday. Ashcroft met with members of the State Anti-Terrorism Task Force for the Southern Judicial District of Iowa. That group includes state, county and local law officers and attorneys. In a news conference after that meeting, Ashcroft says officials across the U-S are needed to fight terrorism.Ashcroft said the terrorists involved in the September 11th attacks were located in towns farther west of Iowa and smaller than Des Moines. He says state and local officials can help fight terrorism by being more sensitive to the things going on around them, things that might not have seemed to be so important in the past. Ashcroft says the danger of another terrorist attack remains real. He doesn’t believe al-Qaida ran thousands through its training camps to make an attack with 12 people and then stop. Ashcroft says the war on terrorism is taking up a lot of resources.He says we cannot forsake the prosecution of more traditional crime, and says we will not, and will continue prosecuting major cases. Ashcroft says that includes continuing the fight against illegal drugs in Iowa.
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