WASHINGTON — Ideological considerations permeated the hiring process at the Justice Department’s civil rights division, where a politically appointed official sought to hire “real Americans” and Republicans for career posts and prominent case assignments, according to a long-awaited report released Tuesday by the department’s inspector general.
The extensive study of hiring practices between 2001 and 2007 concluded that a former department official improperly weeded out candidates based on their perceived ties to liberal organizations. Two other senior managers failed to oversee the process, authorities said.
The key official, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman, favored employees who shared his political views and derided others as “libs” and “pinkos,” the report said.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett said they would refer their findings to legal disciplinary authorities.
“The Department must be vigilant to ensure that such egregious misconduct does not occur in the future,” Fine said in a statement.
The report marks the last in a series of inquiries by internal watchdogs into hiring lapses at the Justice Department during the Bush administration, a scandal that prompted the resignations of more than a dozen senior officials.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the findings “confirmed some of our worst fears about the Bush administration’s corruption of the Justice Department.”
The report’s release was delayed by more than six months after inspector general agents referred the case for possible prosecution by authorities in the District of Columbia. But prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office declined last week to pursue the matter, according to lawyers involved in the case.
The decision means that Schlozman, who went on to serve as an acting U.S. attorney in Missouri, will not face criminal sanctions for testimony he provided to Congress two years ago. Internal Justice Department investigators determined that Schlozman had made “false statements” to lawmakers about his role in the affair, they said in Tuesday’s report.
