Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by using politics to guide their hiring decisions for a wide range of important department positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department's credibility and independence, an internal report concluded Monday.
The report, prepared by the Justice Department's inspector general and its internal ethics office, singles out for particular criticism Monica Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly through the ranks of the department to become a top aide to Gonzales.
Ms. Goodling, who testified before Congress in May 2007 at the height of the scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys, introduced politics into the hiring process in a systematic way that constituted illegal misconduct, the report found.
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In one case, for instance, Goodling slowed the hiring of a prosecutor in the United States attorney's office in Washington, D.C., for a vacancy because she said she was concerned that he was a "liberal Democrat." After the United States attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, complained to her supervisors, he was allowed to hire the candidate anyway.
And in another case, colleagues said that Goodling refused to extend the appointment of a female prosecutor because she believed the lawyer was involved in a lesbian relationship with her supervisor, according to the report.
And in another case cited by the inspector general, Goodling blocked the hiring of an experienced prosecutor for a senior counter-terrorism position because his wife was active in Democratic politics. The candidate was regarded as "head and shoulders above the other candidates" in the view of officials in the executive office of United States attorneys, but they were forced to take a candidate with much less experience because he was deemed acceptable to Goodling.
In forwarding a résumé in 2006 from a lawyer who was working for the Federalist Society, Goodling sent an e-mail message to the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven Bradbury, saying: "Am attaching a résumé for a young, conservative female lawyer."
Goodling interviewed the woman herself for possible positions and wrote in her notes such phrases as "pro-God in public life," and "pro-marriage, anti-civil union." She was eventually hired as a career prosecutor.
Goodling also conducted extensive searches on the Internet to glean the political or ideological leanings of candidates for career positions, the report found. She and other Justice Department supervisors would look for key phrases like "abortion," "homosexual," "guns," or "Florida re-count" to get information on a candidate's political leanings.
