The Baltimore Sun reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft has been lying low the past three months due to a run-in with the White House over his exaggeration of the importance of "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.

"After nearly a year of constant public appearances, Attorney General John Ashcroft has become the Bush administration's Bigfoot - the mythical, rarely seen figure who shows up only briefly before quickly ducking away. Until he made a few appearances last week marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ashcroft - a long-time politician who seems to enjoy the limelight - had kept an unusually low profile during the past three months. "

"The trigger for Ashcroft's vanishing act, according to news reports, was a run-in with the White House after he overstated the case against alleged terrorist Jose Padilla, who was initially accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb."

Senior Bush aides believed Padilla to be a mere "low level scout" for Al Qaeda. They were not happy with Ashcroft's spin.

"A Justice Department spokesman denied last week that the White House had ordered Ashcroft, a former Missouri governor who represented the state in the U.S. Senate, to keep quiet. But the attorney general's schedule shows a remarkable drop-off in news-making announcements."

"He held 17 news conferences in the three months before the Padilla announcement. In the three months afterward, he held one, a session Sept. 3 in which he announced that the nation was on a higher security alert."

Meanwhile, Padilla is still being held in a navy brig and has not been formally charged with a crime.