Justice Dept. slammed for 'politicized' hiring

 

Here's the latest bulletin from the beleaguered Justice Department: A new generation of legal talent was turned away at the gates of the Bush administration by a partisan hiring process that rejected young people of promise if they had ties to Democrats or liberal causes.

The department's inspector general reports today that the hiring process for the attorney general's honors program and its summer law intern program was compromised by politics.

Here's how it worked: Students sent in applications -- complete with transcripts and essays. Careerists at the  department made their choices. And then a three-member committee, first named by Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, reviewed the picks -- and "de-selected" the ones they deemed too political. Which is to say, about half.

The report makes for gut-wrenching reading. There was the candidate -- first in his class at Georgetown Law School, who had clerked for two judges and edited a law journal, and worked for a Democratic senator and a human rights organization. Out.

Even when careerists appealed the "de-selections," the committee held firm. One candidate graduated sixth in his University of Alabama Law School class, was clerking for a judge, had interned for the public defender's service and had written a paper on the detention of aliens under the Patriot Act. Appeal denied. Ditto one Georgetown law student with a 3.08 grade-point average who had worked for Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. And then there was the candidate -- the top priority among all the appeals from the civil division --  one who was a member of the Yale Law Journal, a Rhodes scholar, a Truman scholar, had interned for the U.S. attorney's office in New York and had worked for Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights and the Legal Services Organization's Trafficking Clinic. You guessed it, appeal denied.

The inspector general calls it "misconduct." Republicans might argue that it's par for the course, that every Justice Department hires its own.

Remember that line from the movie "Casablanca?" Capt. Renault says, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Kamenko Pajic/Associated Press

Punching the Ticket: Those White House Vacancies

They come across the transom, a flood of personnel announcements from the White House almost every night, about new employees walking through the front door while many others are leaving out the back.

A few months ago a lobbyist for a D.C. law firm named Covington & Burling came aboard as deputy director of public liaison. Why would a guy with a good job leave his law practice to work for the White House for six months in the waning days of the Bush administration? William B. Wichterman sent word through the White House press office that he "greatly admired" the president and "welcomed the opportunity to come work for him."

All that may be true. And then there's the resume. Always looks better with a line item about serving in the White House-- even if the occupant is a lameduck.

-- Johanna Neuman