In 2006, Justice Department officials fired eight U.S. attorneys (all Bush appointees, most Republicans) without explanation, and Congress is now investigating – as it should.

These firings are highly disturbing, transparently politically motivated – and the tip of the iceberg, revealing the administration‘s fetish for stacking government positions with conservative ideologues. For positions involving political or policymaking roles, this is nothing unusual; every administration wants loyal team players in such roles. But to an unprecedented degree, the Bush Administration has adopted ideological litmus tests for positions for which political loyalty and/or views should be irrelevant or of secondary importance.

Top White House officials approved the firings, and carefully orchestrated them over a two-year period, as documented in the March 3 and March 13 Washington Post by reporters Dan Eggen and John Solomon.[1]

The Justice Department first claimed performance reasons drove the firings. Now we know better: all fired attorneys except one had positive job evaluations. According to Adam Cohen (New York Times, Feb. 26), the firing of Bud Cummins of Arkansas was not performance related, but to replace him with Timothy Griffin, a former Karl Rove deputy and Republican National Committee researcher.[2]

Recently released e-mails are even more damning: U.S. attorneys were ranked based on whether they “exhibited loyalty” to the administration, or “chafed against administration initiatives, etc.” (Washington Post, March 13)

Some firings are difficult to explain as anything but political retaliation. As reported by Dan Eggen in the March 1 Washington Post, fired attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico, who had glowing evaluations, revealed two Republican members of Congress pressured him to hurry indictments of Democrats before the 2006 elections.

Iglesias balked, and concluded the lawmakers complained to the Justice Department that “I wasn’t a team player,” leading to his dismissal. Another fired attorney, Carol Lam of California, had investigated Republican former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now in prison for bribing defense contractors (New York Times, Feb. 26).

Lam recently had won another indictment, of a former top CIA official. Her replacement has little criminal law experience – but is a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group with strong White House ties.

U.S. attorneys are presidential appointees. Partisan loyalty does influence their initial appointment to office, and legally, they can be dismissed at will. Still, these firings are highly improper. Once in office, U.S. attorneys must enjoy independence: freedom to investigate and prosecute based on law, facts and evidence – not political pressures. Presidents have accepted this – until now. Before the firings, the Congressional Research Service found at most three firings of U.S. attorneys under similar circumstances in 25 years.

The firings are just one example of the Bush Administration’s relentless efforts to politicize every government agency to serve a conservative agenda. A survey of government scientists revealed that 46 percent felt pressure from Bush political appointees to downplay the threat of global warming; scientists also reported 435 cases of political interference in their work since 2001.[3]

These include repeated efforts to muzzle climate scientist James Hansen on global warming, and political appointees altering scientific reports, invariably to heighten uncertainty about global warming or downplay its pace or impacts – all highly desirable outcomes to pro-Republican oil, gas, timber, coal and utility interests.[4]

To please anti-abortionists, Bush appointees added language to government Web sites claiming studies were inconclusive on whether abortion and breast cancer were linked. After medical researchers objected that studies show no such relationship, the offending language was removed.[5]

Bush political appointees have repeatedly overruled recommendations from panels of experts, on issues including endangered species,[6] ‘Plan B’ emergency contraception, Georgia’s 2005 ‘voter ID’ law and the 2003 Texas redistricting.[7]

These actions demeaned the work of and demoralized government experts, but benefited the Republican Party or its base – corporate interests and religious-right groups.

The administration even uses political litmus tests in appointing scientists to government advisory panels. Some candidates have been asked their views on abortion, whether they voted for Bush or other questions irrelevant to the panel’s charge of evaluating scientific research.[8]

University of Miami marine biologist Sharon Smith was immediately rejected for a position on the U.S. Arctic Research Commission after responding negatively to a question on whether she supported Bush. The politicization even extended to Iraq reconstruction. The Defense Department often elevated political loyalty over all else in considering candidates for reconstruction jobs: A 24-year-old Bush loyalist with no finance background was put in charge of reopening Iraq’s stock exchange.[9]

The political purge of U.S. attorneys exemplifies the Bush Administration’s long-standing pattern of rampant politicization of government agencies and processes. John DiIulio, who headed Bush’s faith-based initiatives office, revealed that in this White House “everything, and I mean everything, is run by the political arm.” Hiring political loyalists isn’t necessarily problematic – to the extent education, credentials and experience still matter.

Excessive insistence on political loyalty compromises independent decision-making, erodes the credibility of government scientific agencies, damages employee morale and results in hiring less-than-qualified individuals.

Fred Slocum is an associate professor of political science at Minnesota State University.



[1] On White House involvement, see

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/12/AR2007031201818.html.

[2] On the firings of U.S. attorneys, see this op-ed in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/opinion/26mon4.html, and the following Washington Post stories:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030101368.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/28/AR2007022801502.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030201949.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701509.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/14/AR2007031400519.html

[3] On political pressure on climate change, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16886008/.

[4] As one example of editing reports, see

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html.

[5] On abortion and breast cancer, see

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=7364; http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0106/p11s02-coop.htm;

and http://www.nwhn.org/news/fact_sheets?story=1&PHPSESSID;=c78d0bafa4f2702bf48cd9a74b1e7266.

[6] On endangered species, see

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900776_pf.html.

[7] This references my August 28, 2006 column “The Arrogance of GOP Power” in the Free Press,

which described the Georgia, Texas and Plan B cases.

[8] On political litmus tests, see:

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=127&subsecID;=177&contentID;=251796,

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33032, and pp. 25-29 in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ report,

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/Scientific_Integrity_in_Policy_Making_July_2004_1.pdf.

[9] On Iraq reconstruction, see Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside

Iraq’s Green Zone (2006), and related article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html.