Department of Just Us: Bush v. Merit System
By RICHARD STEIER

To understand the failures and incompetence of the Bush Administration, you could do worse than to examine the portion of the Justice Department's own report on how politics affected countless hirings for what were supposed to be nonpolitical jobs at the agency, beginning with the person it identified as Candidate #1.

POLITICS TRUMPED QUALIFICATIONS: The politicizing of job decisions at the Justice Department was just another instance in which President Bush and appointees like ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales disregarded the law and basic tenets of competence in favor of loyalty and ideology.

He was a 19-year veteran Assistant U.S. Attorney when he applied in September 2006 for a temporary assignment working on counterterrorism issues. The job notice, the Justice Department report released July 28 stated, required that applicants have past experience prosecuting terrorism cases and it was preferred that they have five years of criminal prosecution experience.

'Head and Shoulders Above'

Candidate #1, the report noted, had extensive experience in both areas "and had successfully prosecuted a high-profile terrorism case for which he received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service." As chief of the anti-terrorism unit in his office, he had worked with "two joint terrorism task forces containing multiple agencies and agents" and had communicated extensively on the subject with senior Justice Department officials who focused on terrorism.

Michael Battle, who was the Director for the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys in the Justice Department, told its Inspector General that his Associate Counsel, Natalie Voris, informed him that Candidate #1 "was head and shoulders above the other candidates who had applied for the counterterrorism detail," the report stated.

Candidate #1 didn't get the job, however. Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's White House Liaison at the time, refused to sign off, the report said, because "the candidate's wife was a prominent local Democrat elected official and vice-chairman of a local Democratic Party."

Instead, an Assistant U.S. Attorney with slightly more than two years on the job — which was supposed to require a minimum of five years of Federal prosecuting experience — was hired, even though, the report noted, "He had no counterterrorism experience." He had one important credential, however, it continued: he was "a registered Republican who Goodling had interviewed and approved ..."

It didn't matter that this was one of the positions within the Justice Department for which political affiliation was supposed to be of no consequence. The report found that Ms. Goodling, her predecessor as Justice's White House Liaison, Jan Williams, and their immediate boss, Office of the Attorney General Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson, repeatedly ignored rules that prohibited them from considering "political and ideological affiliations" in making appointments to career positions in the Justice Department as prosecutors, Immigration Judges, and Board of Immigration Appeals Members.

Their boss while much of this was going on, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has denied knowing that they were engaging in conduct that the Justice Department last week stated violated both Federal law and agency policy. Sixteen months ago, shortly before he resigned, Mr. Gonzales also denied knowledge of improper political machinations playing a role in the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys who at the time were either prosecuting corruption cases against Republican officials or decided not to investigate alleged voter fraud by Democrats.

Loyalty Was His Ticket to Rise

If it seemed remarkable at the time that the man with the highest law-enforcement position in the nation could know so little about what was going on in his own agency, it nonetheless was not that shocking. Mr. Gonzales had reached that position not because of legal brilliance or success as a prosecutor but by riding the political coattails of President Bush from their days together in Texas. His most-endearing quality was his loyalty, and it sometimes led him to tolerate people with a similar faithfulness whose ethical lapses should have kept them from getting within smelling distance of important Federal jobs.

Mr. Gonzales, after all, was the guy who green-lighted Bernie Kerik for U.S. Homeland Security Secretary even after White House officials became aware of the former Police Commissioner's long series of transgressions and questionable associations. The bottom line apparently was that Mr. Bush liked Mr. Kerik personally, and expected him to show the same loyalty that he previously displayed to Rudy Giuliani. In the end, that didn't work out so well for anyone concerned, embarrassing the President and shining a spotlight on Mr. Kerik that has gotten him convicted in state court and indicted by the very same Justice Department. It also dealt a damaging blow to Mr. Giuliani's White House aspirations.

It is hardly the greatest error in judgment Mr. Gonzales committed during his six-plus years as a top Federal official, however. As White House Counsel he hatched the legal justification for ignoring the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war, defended the long-term incarceration of suspected terrorists without presenting charges against them, and approved the wiretapping of Americans suspected of possible terrorist connections without getting prior approval from Congress.

Men on a Mission

These actions eroded America's standing in the international community and chipped away at the Constitution. What did this matter to Mr. Gonzales, however, or Mr. Bush? Like Ms. Goodling, they believed themselves to be on a mission, and there were no laws, rules or standards that could hold them back.

There is a problem, of course, with disregarding such societal norms. Once you've decided they don't matter, and that as one Bush aide once put it, you're operating on a different plane from the "reality-based community," competence and genuine qualifications may fall off the table in the process.

And so the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency becomes a guy known by the President as "Brownie," whose only basis for appointment seems to be that he was the college roommate of one of your top officials. You prepare to give your top domestic anti-terrorism job to Mr. Kerik, who aside from his personal issues held the title of Police Commissioner without actually doing much decision-making — reflected in bold-face by the fact that on 9/11 he reverted to his old role as Mr. Giuliani's bodyguard while First Deputy Commissioner Joe Dunne coordinated the NYPD's response to the terrorist attacks.

Throwing CIA a 'Curveball'

Once professional qualifications and expertise are pushed to the side, you disregard the findings of the Central Intelligence Agency regarding Saddam Hussein and buy claims about his efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction made by a character so dubious that his CIA code name was Curveball. And so you devote so much money and military personnel to an unnecessary invasion of Iraq that you're hampered in pursuing the real terrorist threats elsewhere in Asia while the economy goes south and the Federal deficit balloons.

Mr. Bush apparently so believed his campaign rhetoric about government being the problem rather than the solution that he has de-professionalized some of its key components. The Justice Department report offers a particularly vivid illustration of how this took effect at that agency.

Ms. Goodling came to the Justice Department in 2002 from the Republican National Committee, and held a series of political positions until October 2005, when she was appointed Counsel to the Attorney General. Six months later she was promoted to Senior Counsel and appointed the agency's White House Liaison.

The Justice Department report notes that within the agency, "It is not improper to consider political affiliations when hiring for political positions. However, both Department policy and Federal law prohibit discrimination in hiring for Department career positions on the basis of political affiliations."

Understated Her Transgressions

Ms. Goodling in testimony before Congress 15 months ago acknowledged that "in a very small number of cases, I believe that my decisions may have been influenced in part based on political considerations."

The report found that she was far too modest in describing these violations of law and agency policy as "a very small number of cases."

Political considerations became a factor in the large majority of nonpolitical positions she was entrusted to pass judgment upon, the report indicated. "Our investigation demonstrated that Goodling sometimes used for career applicants the same political screening techniques she employed in considering applications for political positions. In addition, she used for candidates who were interested in any position, whether career or political, the same political screening she used for applicants who applied solely for political positions, and some of these candidates were placed in career positions."

Aside from her distaste for anyone with a Democratic background, Ms. Goodling apparently believed even some of Mr. Bush's own trusted managers fell short of the desired standards for political conservatism. When one candidate for a job whom she asked to identify public officials that he admired cited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the report stated, "Goodling 'frowned' and commented, 'but she's pro-choice.'''

Thirty-four job candidates who spoke to the Justice Department said Ms. Goodling or her assistant had discussed their views on abortion, and 21 said they discussed gay marriage. In one case, the Justice Department report found, Ms. Goodling prevented the extension of an Assistant U.S. Attorney's job assignment and then tried to prevent her from gaining assignments to agency units dealing with sex-offender sentencing and violence against women because she was convinced the woman was a lesbian. The report noted that "Department policy prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation."

'Negatives' Were Discarded

Her predecessor as White House Liaison, Jan Williams, had instructed Ms. Goodling in how to do an Internet search to turn up any undesirable political affiliations job candidates had or any statements they had made that would raise red flags. She told Congress she had not kept records of her research because, "Normally, if I found something that was negative about someone, we didn't hire them, and I wouldn't have necessarily retained it."

Mr. Gonzales gave the Justice Department probe a response about Ms. Goodling similar to what he had offered Congress about the political factors that may have led to the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys: that he knew nothing about what had occurred. His Chief of Staff, Mr. Sampson, when asked whether he knew about the computer searches done by Ms. Williams and Ms. Goodling to weed out those deemed politically suspect, replied, "Not that I remember."

In talking about her idea of the right kind of candidates for career jobs, Ms. Goodling said it was essential that such persons be "on the team." This was also the phrase used by Mr. Kerik during his days as Correction Commissioner to distinguish those who were loyal supporters, politically as well as operationally, from those who were viewed as either disloyal or just wanted to do their jobs. Such people were dangerous precisely because they wanted to play by longtime standards rather than the far more arbitrary ones imposed by Mr. Kerik and Ms. Goodling.

'No Regard for Qualifications'

The Justice Department report stated that she often rejected career officials in the agency who were either up for details to special assignments or seeking extension of those assignments because of politics rather than ability. It found that "she often rejected candidates based on her perception of [their political leanings], some of which were inaccurate, without regard to professional qualifications."

The report added, "Goodling's decisions were particularly damaging to the Department because they resulted in high-quality candidates being rejected for important positions ... we were also troubled by cases in which details of career attorneys who were performing in an outstanding fashion were terminated because of their political affiliation."

She also was responsible for reviewing candidates for positions as Immigration Judges, all of which are career posts that are supposed to be free of politics in the appointment process, and the 15-member Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also meant to consist strictly of career appointees. But Ms. Goodling and her predecessor, the Justice Department report found, "treated IJ positions as if they were political appointments."

Rove's Fingerprints?

This meant that the two women pushed candidates for Immigration Judge seats who were recommended by Republican officials ranging from Members of Congress to then-Governor George Pataki, and in one case, someone whose resume was forwarded directly by Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's key election strategist who headed the White House Office of Political Affairs. Mr. Rove is currently ducking a subpoena from Congress asking that he appear to testify about the firings of the eight U.S. Attorneys and the role politics may have played in their dismissals.

While castigating Ms. Goodling and Ms. Williams for violating the law and agency policy in politicizing the appointments to Immigration Judge positions and the BIA, the Justice Department report noted that this policy originated above their heads. "In an e-mail on October 8, 2003, Sampson [who at the time was Counsel to Attorney General John Ashcroft] outlined a new process for hiring IJs that listed the White House as the sole source for generating candidates."

The report stated, "Not only did this process violate the law and Department policy, it also caused significant delays in appointing IJs. These delays increased the burden on the immigration courts, which already were experiencing an increased workload and a high vacancy rate."

The end result was an agency that was both corrupted and stymied by political machinations regarding positions that were supposed to be merit appointments. Mr. Gonzales, taking a stance similar to that of Mr. Bush's old friend who was CEO at Enron when it exploded in scandal, Kenneth Lay, has protested that he knew nothing of any of the wrongdoing that was going on under his watch.

Where the Buck Stops

Mr. Sampson and Ms. Williams were both ensconced in the Attorney General's Office before Mr. Gonzales arrived, and Ms. Goodling was rising through the Justice Department ranks before he became Attorney General. And so if he was, in the best light, an inattentive boss, where does the responsibility go for putting these people in the positions they were in to undermine the agency that above all others is supposed to champion fairness and obeying the law?

It's tempting to point the finger at Mr. Rove, who particularly after Mr. Bush was re-elected sought to exert greater political control over agencies so that their policies would conform to what he believed was needed to help build a "permanent" Republican majority in the Federal Government.

But who gave Mr. Rove that power? The same man who lacked either the intelligence or the grasp of government to realize that for it to work properly, you can't make the ability to pass a loyalty test the criteria for who gets hired and who doesn't for key positions.

When honesty, competence and merit get trampled by political considerations, you wind up with the national and international embarrassment that the Bush Administration has become.