Source:
WaPoTuesday, June 24, 2008; 11:50 AM
Justice Department officials improperly used political and ideological factors to screen applicants for the agency's prestigious honors and summer intern programs, sometimes rejecting otherwise qualified candidates because of their ties to Democrats, internal auditors said in a report issued this morning.
The long awaited review faulted Bush administration officials for violating Justice Department policy and civil service rules beginning in 2002, when they tried to fill career posts with rookie lawyers whose political affiliations mirrored their own.
Investigators for the Justice Department's Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, which oversees legal ethics, reviewed thousands of e-mail messages and conducted interviews with current and former officials, concluding that the hiring efforts "undermined confidence in the integrity of the department's hiring processes."
The report traced the problems back six years, to when Justice officials urged political appointees in the department's many divisions to take a more active role in hiring for the summer intern and honors programs. The activity flourished in 2002, dying down for a few years, before reviving in 2006, according to the investigative report.
Read more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062400819.html?hpid=topnews
Watchdogs whack DOJ for cronyism Posted June 24, 2008 11:44 AM
Andrew Zajac
A pair of Justice Department watchdogs this morning weighed in with a scathing report which concludes that senior department officials used political affiliation to weed out candidates for coveted appointments to a pair of prestigious entry level programs which are supposed to be non-partisan and merit based.
Screeners for the Honors Program and the Summer Legal Intern Program in 2002 and 2006 "improperly deselected candidates for interviews based on political and ideological affiliations. Both Department policy and federal law prohibit discrimination in hiring for career positions on the basis of political affiliations," states the report, which was jointly released by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsiblity Counsel H. Marshall Jarrett.
Their report puts two officials, Esther Slater McDonald, counsel to the Associate Attorney General, and Michael Elston, the then-chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney General on the hook for misconduct:
"The documentary evidence and witness interviews also support the conclusion that ( McDonald and Elston) took political or ideological affiliations into account in deselecting candidates, in violation of Department policy and federal law, and thereby committed misconduct," the report states.
more:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/06/watchdogs_whack_doj_for_cronyi.htmlAn Investigation of Allegations of
Politicized Hiring in the
Department of Justice Honors Program
and
Summer Law Intern Programhttp://www.usdoj.gov/opr/oig-opr-investigation-hire-slip.pdf