Watch what you put on your CV

We already know about the firing of federal prosecutors for shady political reasons, and several "loyal Bushies" had to resign because of it. Now it was revealed that hiring practices also became politicized under the Bush Admin. The two previous Atty Generals Ashcroft and Gonzalez decided to break tradition and shift the hiring duties for prestigious Justice Dept career-track Honors Program attorneys and even summer interns. Instead of the usual DOJ permanent staff, the AG's "working group", a committee of political appointees, would make the final decisions. Now why would they need to do that? Technically it's against the law to discriminate based on political affiliation, age, race, gender, etc. for DOJ hirings.

So for similarly-qualified individuals with different "apparent" political affiliations (based on group memberships or other participations listed on their CVs), Liberal-leaning applicants had a significantly higher chance of being deselected/rejected versus conservative- or neutral-leaning applicants. Now you might expect the typical red flags of the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Planned Parenthood, but also the Chesapeke Bay Foundation, NAACP, and anything with "Minnesota" in it (seriously!) were considered liberal also. The hiring committee even ran web searches and examined the MySpace pages of applicants, ostensibly to glean their political affiliations beyond what was documented on their CVs. So be careful what you put on your CV and the web! So most of the people who may be found guilty for misconduct have already left the DOJ, though probably now they will be banned from ever holding future positions. As expected, when confronted with these findings, the most guilty members of the hiring committee (Esther McDonald, Michael Elston) seemed surprised and denied that they took politics/ideology into account for hirings. To his credit, current AG Mukasey and his people have worked hard to repair a lot of this damage and restore the previous hiring prodecure. But in terms of restoring public perceptions and confidence in DOJ impartiality, that might take longer.

Probably another whammy is to come when the DOJ soon releases its report on misconduct allegations at their Civil Rights Division.

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All Things Considered, June 24, 2008 · A Justice Department audit released Tuesday found that a screening program installed at the department in 2002 kept out Democrat- or liberal-leaning attorneys. Those with Republicans ties, meanwhile, got interviewed for plum positions at the department.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91853803
Report: Justice Dept. Considered Politics in Hiring
Listen: Nina Totenberg discusses the report on 'Morning Edition.'
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Read the Report
Investigation into Allegations of Politicized Hiring at the Justice Department (PDF)


A hiring committee at the Justice Department regularly decided who could get key job interviews based upon their political affiliations, according to a report by the department's inspector general. The report showed that young lawyers with Democratic Party and liberal affiliations on their resumes were denied job interviews at the Justice Department, while Republican-affiliated applicants had a better chance at the key jobs. "The screening committees in 2002 and 2006 improperly deselected candidates for interviews based on political and ideological affiliations," the report said.

Considering politics in the hiring process is a violation of department policy and federal law. The report said that everyone who performed screening was contacted, and all denied considering politics when deciding who would be permitted into a competitive honors program for entry-level attorneys or as summer interns. After determining that the hiring process was hugely politicized, the IG contacted the screeners to show them the analysis. The screeners told investigators they were surprised by the findings. The report noted that these hiring practices were changed in 2007 and that Attorney General Michael Mukasey said such practices would not be repeated. In addition, Mukasey said he would adopt the inspector general's additional recommendations.