Surveillance measures allowed under the Patriot Act and other post-Sept. 11 legislation serve to enrich our liberty, not hinder it, John Ashcroft said in Springfield on Thursday.

Ashcroft, a former U.S. attorney general and Missouri governor, was in town to address the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association at its Law Day U.S.A. luncheon.

During a 20-minute speech, he told a packed banquet hall at the Doubletree Hotel on North Glenstone how the rule of law served to enrich life in America.

"Why is it that America is the best location, the best geography, the best community on the face of the earth?" he said. "Because we have a central core value that this fundamentally imparted. It is the core value of liberty."

The most important characteristic Americans share, Ashcroft said, is the "value of freedom."

He went on to recount how he first came to hear of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks --as he was flying to Milwaukee --and the scramble to secure the country in the days that followed.

"There's been a great deal of debate ... regarding my involvement in how we were prepared to defend and sustain freedom," he said. "If you don't like what you get, you better change what you're doing, so the Patriot Act was a means for us to increase our level of activity so we did not suffer a recurrence of what had transpired."

He singled out provisions in the act that allow "roving wiretap" surveillance of suspected terrorists. The measure came under intense scrutiny in the days after the Patriot Act was enacted.

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