By Paul Kiel - September 7, 2007, 4:49 PM
In
written answers to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bradley Schlozman, the former Justice Department official and U.S. attorney who's been at the center of the firings controversy, admitted that he'd once urged hiring certain prosecutors for his office based on their political affiliation. It's against civil service laws to do so.
But he had a reason,
he explains (how good a reason, you can decide for yourself). When serving as the interim U.S. attorney for Kansas City, Schlozman had been unable to hire assistant U.S. attorneys on his own, as Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys are able to do. For that, he had to go through the central office, or in this case, Monica Goodling, the Department's White House liaison. He'd "heard rumors," he writes,"that Ms. Goodling considered political affiliation in approving hiring decisions for career positions." Goodling, of course,
admitted in testimony to Congress that she'd made sure that only Republicans were hired for certain non-political positions.
And so, Schlozman explains, in order to "maximize the chances" of being able to hire his desired candidate, he "once noted the likely political leanings of several applicants" in a conversation with Department officials.
But there was no damage done! Schlozman adds that none of his desired candidates were hired.
moreSaturday, September 08, 2007
Scott Horton
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The last six years have introduced terrible problems in the country in many areas, including foreign military adventures and gross fiscal mismanagement. But in my view, no problem is more important than the demolition of the integrity of the office of federal prosecutor. Salvaging the reputation of prosecutors, taking a decisive step away from politicization that has been so pernicious in recent years, must stand at the top of the agenda of the next president. Similarly, accountability must follow.
It is not enough simply to expose the unethical and politically inspired deeds of these prosecutors and to rescue the persons who have suffered persecution through their abuse of public office. It is also essential that the prosecutors who have misbehaved be held to account for their misconduct. That must happen through the appointment of a special prosecutor tasked to investigate politically manipulated cases, such as those in Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as the voter-suppression programs. In many of these cases there is already sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation whether the prosecutors’ conduct passes beyond bad judgment and into the realm of criminal wrongdoing.
<...>
On April 1, 1940, one of the greatest attorneys general in U.S. history, Robert H. Jackson, addressed a gathering of U.S. attorneys in the Great Hall at the Department of Justice in Washington. His words set a standard for how federal prosecutors should conduct themselves—a standard which seems to have faded into oblivion in the era of the Karl Rove-Alberto Gonzales Justice Department. His words need to be recalled today:
<...>
If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.
In times of fear or hysteria political, racial, religious, social, and economic groups, often from the best of motives, cry for the scalps of individuals or groups because they do not like their views. Particularly do we need to be dispassionate and courageous in those cases which deal with so-called “subversive activities.” They are dangerous to civil liberty because the prosecutor has no definite standards to determine what constitutes a “subversive activity,” such as we have for murder or larceny. Activities which seem benevolent and helpful to wage earners, persons on relief, or those who are disadvantaged in the struggle for existence may be regarded as “subversive” by those whose property interests might be burdened or affected thereby. Those who are in office are apt to regard as “subversive” the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration. Some of our soundest constitutional doctrines were once punished as subversive. We must not forget that it was not so long ago that both the term “Republican” and the term “Democrat” were epithets with sinister meaning to denote persons of radical tendencies that were “subversive” of the order of things then dominant.
In the enforcement of laws which protect our national integrity and existence, we should prosecute any and every act of violation, but only overt acts, not the expression of opinion, or activities such as the holding of meetings, petitioning of Congress, or dissemination of news or opinions. Only by extreme care can we protect the spirit as well as the letter of our civil liberties, and to do so is a responsibility of the federal prosecutor. . .
The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.
Jackson has in a few words very eloquently identified the calling, the aspiration of prosecutors, and he has highlighted the sharp prospect of abuse—abuse of which we read in these anxious days with every newspaper that lands at our doorstep. The proper response to this abuse is anger and concern for the damage to our country that this is bringing. The proper reaction is to demand accountability. We are as yet only at the start of that path.
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