DOJ's War on Competence (Larry Schwartztol at HuffPost)

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DOJ's War on Competence (4 comments )

With the plot to unload disfavored U.S. Attorneys largely exposed, Alberto Gonzales' grip on his job seems increasingly tenuous. But a parallel story of troubled governance at the Justice Department illustrates even deeper institutional damage: Gonzales and his predecessor, John Ashcroft, have populated key components of DOJ with partisan operatives, many of whom lack substantive qualification for their jobs.


And unlike the president's political appointees, who will presumably depart when the administration ends, this cadre of bureaucrats will remain embedded in the government--and shielded by civil service protections against new bosses who want to oust them.
The emerging story centers on the Department's Civil Rights Division, which enforces the nation's anti-discrimination laws. Several veterans of the Division have spoken out recently, describing imperious political appointees who obstruct prosecution of civil rights cases and re-route the Division's staff to other types of work. According to a working paper by Joseph Rich, who spent almost 37 years in the Division's voting rights section, this internal sabotage has "resulted in an alarming exodus of career attorneys--the longtime backbone of the Division that had historically maintained the institutional knowledge of how to enforce our civil rights laws." Numerous reports have suggested that those chased out are being replaced by political loyalists who mostly lack civil rights experience: according to an investigation by the Boston Globe, only 42 percent of the lawyers hired between 2003 and 2006 had civil rights backgrounds, whereas 77 percent of those hired in the preceding two years had such backgrounds.

It's not just that the administration exiles career attorneys by making their work unpalatable. Since at least 2002, Justice Department higher-ups have meddled with the processes for hiring new lawyers and evaluating current employees. William Yeomans, who served in the Division for 24 years, has written that Ashcroft transformed the Division's participation in DOJ's prestigious "honors program." Previously, a committee of career lawyers searched for young attorneys with sterling credentials and demonstrated commitment to civil rights; now, political functionaries select ideological compatriots and disregard standard markers of merit. And Rich, in rather shocking testimony before Congress last month, recounts being "ordered to change standard performance evaluations of attorneys under my supervision to include critical comments of those who had made recommendations that were counter to the political will of the front office, and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored." Similar assaults on competence have been reported in other segments of the Justice Department, and throughout the government. Last year, an article in the Nation reviewed trends at the Federal Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Interior Department, as well as Justice, and found that ideological aggressiveness was driving out experienced and committed professionals, resulting in "rudderless, demoralized agencies bleeding institutional memory." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-schwartztol/dojs-war-on-competence_b_44808.html