A STUNNING INDICTMENT

(Via ThinkProgress)

Former Justice Department Official Calls Gonzales' Actions 'Appalling'
By Rebecca Carr
Washington Bureau
Cox Newspapers
Sunday, June 10, 2007

(excerpts and some commentary)

WASHINGTON — Dan Metcalfe ... director of the department's Office of Information and Privacy, which he co-founded in 1981.

Metcalfe, 55, retired in early January, just before the storm erupted over the dismissal last year of nine U.S. attorneys.

The Justice Department, Metcalfe said, has been heavily damaged by "sheer political expediency, avoidance of individual responsibility, defensive personal aggrandizement, irresponsible 'consensus' decision-making (and) disregard for long-standing practices and principles."

He criticized the Bush administration for filling positions that are traditionally held by career employees with political appointees and protégés.

"I had planned to work there until 2007 and at least 2008, ... That changed in mid-2005, however, when a rash of new mid-level political appointees, woefully lacking in government experience, began making the same types of mistakes over and again."

"Mind you, these were almost entirely process problems, not policy ones per se, but in the aggregate they set a pattern of government disdain by a whole cadre of such aides who all too often were permitted to run rampant by the Department's senior leadership."

The last two paragraphs remind me of the dysfunctional nature of decision-making that Paul O'Neill, Fredo's first Secretary of the Treasury, pointed out several years ago. Lawrence Wilkerson made a similar point about national security decision making. Metcalfe isn't afraid to name the hacks:

"When you see images of Kyle Sampson (Gonzales's former chief of staff), Monica Goodling (Gonzales's former counsel), and Mike Elston (chief of staff to the deputy attorney general) "handling" U.S. attorneys as they did, with virtually no adult supervision to compensate for their glaring lack of management experience,..."

"It is well grounded in fact that during the past six years many more positions have been filled by political or "political protege" appointees there, rather than by career officials as in the past. These positions include that of an assistant attorney general, numerous deputy assistant attorneys general, and even some positions down at the level of branch director or section chief in the department's litigating divisions. And this is true also at the "component head" level. "

Metcalfe makes a chilling comparison:

"From my perspective, these current comparisons to the Watergate era are quite apt, even recognizing that the wide-ranging Watergate scandal involved many elements of proven criminality that do not appear to be present here."


"It is the arrogance of power, the palpable disdain for the rule of law, and the utter disregard for the Justice Department's integrity that brings this so very close to the Watergate era."

"...there is an unhealthy lack of distance between the Justice Department and the White House now. That tradition of distance and independence stems from the Department's singular role in its administration of our system of justice and the rule of law. ... To be sure, it was breached badly under Nixon, ... To say that it has been absolutely shattered by the concerted efforts of Gonzales, Bush, and Karl Rove (not to mention those in the office of the vice president) is nearly redundant by now.

Gonzales makes "Drapes" Ashcroft seem good in comparison:

"...the fact that both are conservatives has become meaningless. The key contrast is their standing as individuals and as respectable holders of public trust, or not. Gonzales has now shown himself to be so lacking as to defy complete description; words seem inadequate in the face of such blithe noncompetence. Suffice to say that his standing relative to other attorneys general comports with how this president compares with his own predecessors."