THROUGH GOOD presidents and bad, the US Justice Department's career attorneys have done their best to uphold high, nonpartisan standards in enforcing the nation's laws. That fell apart under President Bush, according to a report this week by the department's own inspector general, Glenn Fine, and its Office of Professional Responsibility.
Investigators found that applicants for both career and political posts had to pass tests of loyalty to conservative politics. The most flagrant enforcers of an ideological litmus test have since left the department and are not subject to administrative discipline, but Attorney General Michael Mukasey should order prosecutors to determine whether they committed perjury in statements about their activities.
In a textbook example of how politicizing the department can harm the nation, the report pointed to the case of an applicant who was a highly qualified career counter-terror prosecutor. The department rejected him because of his wife's Democratic politics and instead chose a much less experienced lawyer with Republican credentials.
Last month, Fine reported on the department's use of an ideological test to pick interns and young lawyers for a special honors program. The new report shows just how widespread the practice was and calls for a tougher response from Mukasey, who said this week that he was "disturbed by the findings" and determined to keep political considerations out of hiring decisions. Prosecuting officials for perjury and using subpoenas to get testimony from former White House aides like Karl Rove about their role in politicizing Justice would be an excellent way to make sure future presidents are not tempted to make the department a wing of their own political party.
Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted to bring contempt charges against Rove for not responding to its own subpoena. The ranking Republican on the panel, Lamar Smith of Texas, called the majority's action a "witch hunt," but the committee is justified in seeking out who encouraged the political hiring and who orchestrated the firing of nine Bush-appointed US attorneys in 2006. According to the report, the attorney general at the time, Alberto Gonzales, told Fine he was not aware that his aides were using political criteria in hiring decisions.
This confession of cluelessness echoes statements Gonzales made last year about the purge of the US attorneys and only strengthens the suspicion that Justice officials were getting marching orders from the White House. Congress and Mukasey owe the nation a fuller explanation of what went wrong in Bush's Justice Department.
