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Ashcroft travel assessment unrelated to terrorism

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Justice Department officials said Thursday a security assessment conducted early last summer strongly urged Attorney General John Ashcroft not to travel on commercial airliners, but they insist the recommendation was not prompted by information about terrorist threats.

"It had nothing to with these threats and warnings you're hearing about," said one of the officials.

The official said intelligence warnings of a possible terrorist hijacking was not related to the assessment.

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The date the written assessment was delivered was not immediately available.

On Wednesday, the White House acknowledged that President Bush had received a warning last summer that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network might attempt to hijack a U.S. airliner. That warning was passed on in one of his daily intelligence briefings.

But senior Bush administration officials said that there was no speculation about the use of an airplane as a bomb or weapon and no specific, credible information about the possibility of a hijacking.

On Thursday, Justice officials said for security reasons Ashcroft had flown on private government planes on many occasions prior to the assessment. He had flown commercially at times, most notably on weekend trips back to his Missouri home.

Following the assessment, Ashcroft agreed to take the private FBI jets most of the time when he traveled both inside and outside the United States.

But an official stressed that depending on changing threats and destination, the attorney general may still choose to take a commercial flight. For example, Ashcroft flew commercially this winter to a Caribbean justice ministers meeting in Trinidad.

Ashcroft's predecessor Janet Reno often flew commercially over the objections of security officials, according to her former aides. They say a bounty placed on Reno by Latin American drug kingpins was among security factors that prompted Reno to fly on government aircraft at times.