George W Bush's nominee to be the next US attorney general has been linked to
an extremist pro-gun lobbying group which believes that the answer to
America's school shootings is to allow pupils to be armed in the classroom.

The revelation that former senator John Ashcroft has recent links with the
militant Gun Owners of America (GOA) group is the latest twist in an
increasingly impassioned partisan battle over a nomination which has become a
major trial of political strength for Mr. Bush. Even many conservatives
consider the GOA to be extremist. After a shooting at an Oregon school in May
1998 in which two pupils were killed by a fellow student, it issued a press
release headed: "Lesson of school shootings: More guns needed at schools".

Its director, Larry Pratt, was forced to resign as cochairman of Pat
Buchanan's 1996 presidential bid after news leaked of his links with the Ku
Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations and right-wing militia groups. Mr Pratt is also
head of an anti-immigrant organisation called English First. It emerged
yesterday that Mr. Ashcroft wrote a friendly handwritten letter in March 1998
to Mr. Pratt, thanking him for drawing his attention to provisions in a juvenile justice
bill which imposed increased penalties for gun law offenses. As a result of the GOA's
lobbying, Mr. Ashcroft, who had originally been a sponsor of the bill, withdrew his
support for the legislation. The letter wassent on Senate notepaper and was addressed
"Dear Larry" and signed "Thanks! John".

This is not the only known link between Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Pratt. The two
men know each another from a secretive but highly influential right-wing
religious group called the Council for National Policy, of which Mr. Pratt is
a member and whose meetings Mr. Ashcroft has attended. The CNP's membership
is almost a who's who of US conservatism and includes the Republican
congressional leaders Senator Trent Lott and Congressman Tom DeLay. The
revelation of the link with Mr. Pratt came as two other allegations about Mr.
Ashcroft's extreme right-wing links also surfaced.
 

In the first, it was confirmed that Mr. Ashcroft took time off from his
bitter senatorial contest last September to meet Thomas Bugel, the president
of the St. Louis chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, to discuss
the case of a CCC member, Charles Sell, jailed by federal authorities on
charges of conspiring to murder an FBI agent. The CCC is the successor
organisation of the Citizens Council, which led the fight against integration
in the South in the 1950s and 60s. The CCC, whose supporters also include
Senator Lott and Senator Jesse Helms, opposes interracial marriage and
nonwhite immigration, and believes black people are genetically less intelligent
than whites. It is currently mobilising to try to defeat a statewide referendum in
Mississippi in April to remove the Confederate flag from the state flag.

Meanwhile, the ultra-conservative Bob Jones University in South Carolina
confirmed that it possessed a transcript of reportedly inflammatory remarks
made by Mr. Ashcroft in a May 1999 speech there. The Senate judiciary
committee, where Mr. Ashcroft faces confirmation hearings next week, had
asked the university to supply a transcript, after rumours surfaced about the
speech. Bob Jones University, whose graduates include the Rev Ian Paisley,
was at the centre of a political storm last year when Mr. Bush made a speech
there to rally conservative support for his presidential bid after he lost the
New Hampshire primary to John McCain. The university had a ban on
interracial dating and supports a doctrinaire anti-Catholic view of the world.

Mr. Ashcroft's nomination has become the latest flashpoint of America's
political culture wars, with both sides preparing for a major confrontation
next week. On Thursday, Mr. Bush urged Mr. Ashcroft's opponents to "tone down
their rhetoric". Mr. Ashcroft spent yesterday trying to shore up support among
moderate Republican senators who support abortion rights, an issue he strongly opposes.
 

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001