"Nothing Compares to the Past Two Years" - Former DOJ official

[The Witch]

Daniel Metcalfe, former director of the DOJ's office of Information and Privacy, has a few things to say about Gonzales.

Under Gonzales, though, almost immediately from the time of his arrival in February 2005, this changed quite noticeably. First, there was extraordinary turnover in the political ranks, including the majority of even Justice’s highest-level appointees. It was reminiscent of the turnover from the second Reagan administration to the first Bush administration in 1989, only more so. Second, the atmosphere was palpably different, in ways both large and small. One need not have had to be terribly sophisticated to notice that when Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey left the department in August 2005 his departure was quite abrupt, and that his large farewell party was attended by neither Gonzales nor (as best as could be seen) anyone else on the AG’s personal staff.

Third, and most significantly for present purposes, there was an almost immediate influx of young political aides beginning in the first half of 2005 (e.g., counsels to the AG, associate deputy attorneys general, deputy associate attorneys general, and deputy assistant attorneys general) whose inexperience in the processes of government was surpassed only by their evident disdain for it.

(snip)

The day that I decided to retire, for example, was one on which I was asked to participate in a matter in which a significant part of the department’s position was aiming to be — there’s no other word for it — false. Briefly stated, someone in the White House had determined that it would be a good idea for an op-ed piece on the subject of government secrecy to be prepared, and although its subject matter extended beyond the Justice Department’s jurisdiction in multiple respects, it was decided that the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs would take on that task nevertheless. I was perfectly able to make several corrections and substantive improvements to a last-minute draft that I received but drew a line at even attempting to “improve” a Defense Department-related paragraph within it that was incorrect by a full 180 degrees.

(snip)


Yes, it became quite clear that under Gonzales, the department placed no more than secondary value on the standards that I and my office had valued so heavily for the preceding 25 years — accuracy, integrity, responsibility, and quality of decision-making being chief among them. Had I stayed as director of OIP, I might have been working for a Monica Goodling protégé by now.

Disclosure: I am affiliated with this publication but have no substantive say in its content. Any responses to this article should go to the author. Please do not consider me as a conduit to the paper.

[Demeter]

1. Hope Congress Puts Him on the Record!

What a tale.

[babylonsister]

2. Very damning. I wonder if the young political aides were

Regent University recruits? Same as it ever was with this admin; people are hired, not for their expertise, but to mindlessly and willingly toe the party line.

[enough]

3. Devastating. A voice from the departed world where DOJ stood for something.

I hope this gets wide circulation. Thanks for posting.

Snips do not do this long interview justice, but here's one>

But the process of agency functioning, however, became dramatically different almost immediately after Gonzales arrived. No longer was emphasis placed on accomplishing something with the highest-quality product in a timely fashion; rather, it became a matter of making sure that a “consensus” was achieved, regardless of how long that might take and with little or no concern that quality would suffer in such a “lowest common denominator” environment. And heaven help anyone, career or noncareer employee, if that “consensus” did not include whatever someone in the White House might think about something, be it large, small, or medium-sized.

In short, the culture markedly shifted to one in which avoiding any possibility of disagreement anywhere was the overriding concern, as if “consensus” were an end unto itself. Undergirding this, what’s more, was the sad fact that so many political appointees in 2005 and 2006 were so obviously thinking not much further than their next (i.e., higher-level) position, in some place where they could “max out” by the end of Bush’s second term.


snip>

and another:

Q: Do you see the department’s decision-making weaknesses that you’ve just sketched out here as connected to its current problems with what it did on the U.S. attorneys?

A: Certainly. You can clearly hear distinct echoes of this in the recent public statements of Kyle Sampson before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He described what to many listeners was an absolutely astonishing process by which he and a small group of others within the Justice Department handled the matter of U.S. attorney replacement. By all accounts, no one person was in charge (Kyle described himself as merely the “aggregator”), it operated strictly by “consensus” (a word that he wielded as if it were an indisputably favorable one), and the end result was something that even he could not fully explain.

Yet it became the “groupthink” recommendation to the AG, an unprecedented “hit list” to be endorsed uncritically, as if it were something upon which Gonzales could rely without thinking. (And with nary a paper trail, by the way, which, I can tell you is no small consideration.) One might ask: Exactly whose dispositive decision was it to include the U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico (let alone the threshold question of why) on that final list? Was there really a good case for including U.S. Attorney John McKay of the Western District of Washington, whom I personally knew to have made tremendous contributions in the area of law enforcement information-sharing programs?

more>

[Joanne98]

4. Bastards!

[MadMaddie]

5. It was never about the job or performance with this administration

and the DOJ it was about loyalty.....absolutely criminal.

[aquart]

6. He speaks very carefully, sticking to what he witnessed.

But I do not buy that the attorneys were ousted (or kept) on the basis of how deferential they were to the Goodlings. Metcalfe is shying away from saying that this administration actively interfered in corruption and other prosecutions to the detriment of the American people.

He's made it much more trivial than it is.

[enough]

7. Nothing trivial about what he's describing here --

the quiet dismantlement of the Department of Justice and replacing it with a political arm of the Bush administration.

[aquart]

8. I stand corrected.

He's showing the mechanics and it is not trivial. He is refusing to speculate on the meaning or intentions of it, as is proper.

[yurbud]

9. k & r