Embattled Justice Dept. touts its successes

In a report released quietly last Friday as part of former President Bush’s efforts to improve his tattered image and burnish his legacy, the outgoing Department of Justice (DoJ) gave itself high marks for combating terrorism, violent crime and financial malfeasance.

The 166-page report, titled “The Accomplishments of the U.S. Department of Justice 2001-2009,” puts a positive spin on the massive changes to the country’s top federal law enforcement agency that occurred during Bush’s eight years in office.

{mosads}“Over the past eight years, the Department has amassed a strong record of accomplishment,” the report concludes. “The work of law enforcement touches all aspects of American life, and the dedicated men and women of the Department work hard on behalf of the American people … Taken together, the Department’s record is one of which all Americans can and should be proud.”

The creation of the National Security Division in 2006 and the doubling of the FBI’s budget between 2001 and 2008 allowed for large increases in the number of intelligence analysts, disrupted terrorist plots and led to the prosecutions of several would-be terrorists, such as Richard Reid, Zacarias Moussaoui and Jose Padilla.

The report, however, fails to address bitter controversies over intelligence-gathering and the right of the government to intrude on citizens’ personal freedom and privacy in its efforts to fight terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Justice Department’s accomplishments report also leaves out any mention of the scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons and the politicization of the department that forced the resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and more than a dozen senior DoJ officials.

The department’s inspector general released a report earlier last week that found that politics permeated hiring decisions at the Justice Department’s civil rights division, contrary to laws that prevented such considerations.

The voice mail for the DoJ’s office of public affairs was full on Tuesday.

Many Democrats on Capitol Hill, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), have said Gonzales’s tenure as attorney general led to a politicization of the DoJ, as well as low morale.

Leahy last week said that Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s “prompt confirmation will do a great deal to restore morale and purpose throughout the Justice Department.”

The DoJ’s final report uses vague terms to describe the harsh interrogation techniques it approved for questioning detainees during critical junctures in Bush’s war on terrorism and omits any mention of the public furor over decisions to give military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it says, the department made combating terrorism its top priority, which required a “significant revision” to Justice’s “structures, policies and procedures.”

{mospagebreak}“As part of that reorganization, the Department launched an extensive effort to prosecute threats to national security as soon as the law, evidence and circumstances permitted,” the report notes.

In the last few years, details have surfaced about intense internal battles over the DoJ’s decision to give the White House broad powers to capture, detain and interrogate suspects around the globe.

{mosads}In March 2003, John Yoo, who at the time was the second-ranking official at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, penned a detailed 81-page legal opinion giving military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods of questioning detainees and argued that wartime powers largely exempted interrogators from laws banning harsh treatment.

DoJ lawyers later rescinded Yoo’s memo and a similar one written for the CIA. Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel at the time and made the decision to rescind the memos, later openly criticized them for using careless legal reasoning to grant national security agencies sweeping interrogation authority.

Yoo’s memos were meant to provide military lawyers with broad legal authority to interrogate detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Another Bush priority, fighting violent crime including gangs, drug trafficking and child exploitation, contributed to violent crime rates “near 30-year lows,” according to the report. The department’s efforts to investigate and prosecute financial crimes led to 1,300 convictions, including those of more than 200 CEOs or presidents, more than 120 vice presidents and more than 50 CFOs at corporations including WorldCom, Adelphia and Enron.

Justice’s legislative accomplishments included the passage of the Patriot Act a month and a half after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Homeland Security Act, which created the Department of Homeland Security, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, and the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006. Also, the report highlights the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003 and 2005, enacted to combat human trafficking of slaves.

President Obama’s Inauguration speech promised to change the way the country prosecutes the war on terrorism and appeared to presage important policy announcements on that front.

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he said in Tuesday’s speech.

In the next few days, Obama is expected to order the eventual closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and to issue new orders barring harsh interrogation treatment of detainees.