Attorney General Won't Prosecute Wrongdoers In Justice Job Scandal

U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey Aug. 12 acknowledged that the Justice Department under his predecessor had "failed" by allowing the politicization of career appointments in violation of both Federal law and agency policy, but said he would not seek to prosecute the offenders.

MICHAEL MUKASEY: Cites 'failures of supervision.'

Mr. Mukasey, in a speech to the American Bar Association in Manhattan, argued that the violations of the Civil Service Law that were uncovered by an internal study did not rise to the level of criminal behavior.

Gonzales Aides Crossed Line

But he stated that top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had clearly crossed the line in making and blocking appointments to nonpolitical senior posts based on candidates' political leanings.

Since replacing Mr. Gonzales, who resigned last year amid heavy criticism from Congress over suspicions that he allowed politics to influence the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, Mr. Mukasey said, "I have made repeatedly clear ... that it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career department employees."

CHARLES E. SCHUMER: Make violations criminal.

The internal report compiled by the Justice Department's Inspector General and its own Ethics Office found that top officials led by Mr. Gonzales's Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, and Monica M. Goodling, the Justice Department's White House Liaison, repeatedly allowed politics to determine their decisions on hirings and reappointments. Mr. Gonzales has claimed to be unaware of their machinations.

Best Qualified Not Good Enough

The most-egregious case involved a vacancy for a position dealing with counterterrorism issues. One ranking official at Justice labeled as "head and shoulders above the other candidates" a 19-year veteran U.S. Attorney with extensive counterterrorism experience who had received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service for his successful prosecution of an unidentified high-profile case. He was rejected, however, by Ms. Goodling because his wife was a Democratic Party activist; she instead chose an Assistant U.S. Attorney who had no counterterrorism experience and less time on the job than the post required, but, the report noted, was "a registered Republican [whom] Goodling had interviewed and approved."

During his speech to the ABA, Mr. Mukasey remarked, "There was a failure of supervision by senior officials in the department. And there was a failure on the part of some employees to cry foul when they were aware, or should have been aware, of problems."

'Not Every Violation is a Crime'

The Justice Department will not bring criminal charges against those whose behavior he condemned, he said, because "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

The New York Times cited the opinions of other legal experts that violating the Civil Service Law was not something that generally led to criminal prosecutions.

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer said he planned to introduce legislation that would make it a crime to fill career positions in an agency based on political considerations. (The Justice Department report had noted that there are positions in the agency that are considered political appointments and can be filled based on factors other than merit, but it also stated that one aspect of Ms. Goodling's transgressions was that she conducted essentially the same job interviews for candidates for both political and career jobs.)

Won't Remove Political Hires

Mr. Mukasey also said that he would not seek to remove those who were appointed to career positions based on political reasons, although he intends to have persons who were improperly passed over by Ms. Goodling re-interviewed to see whether they might be interested in other senior jobs at Justice.

Beth Slavet, a former Chairwoman of the Merit Systems Protection Board, told The Times she believed that all the employees who were given career jobs based on their political leanings should lose those positions if an independent review found that better-qualified candidates had been turned down. "Someone needs to clean up this mess that the Justice Department created, and I don't think what Mukasey is doing goes far enough," she said.