The Gleichschaltung at Justice

By Scott Horton

In the final days of the Weimar Republic, the party in power employed a conscious policy for the consolidation of their authority within the state bureaucracy and other social institutions. This policy was simple—it required silencing critics and ensuring that all positions of confidence were in the hands of persons who were true to the line of the party. For historians of the period, this process is known as the “Gleichschaltung” or “synchronization.” Is the process pursued by Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove in the American Justice Department an American sort of “Gleichschaltung”? Every day it seems that a stronger case can be made that it is.

Today the third smoking gun has been revealed.

Murray Waas authors an amazing article in the National Journal based on a secret memorandum issued by Alberto Gonzales. In this memo, Gonzales gave unprecedented authority to hire and fire senior officials of the Department of Justice to his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, and to his White House liaison, fifth amendment-invoking Monica Goodling (Regent University ’99).

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department's political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation.

Due to a secret amendment of the Patriot Act, this list arguably included U.S. attorneys—the officials who wield the attorney general’s prosecutorial authority in the nation’s 93 judicial districts. Waas tells us that the initial draft order was found to be illegal by the Office of Legal Counsel—it was an absolute delegation of authority. It was therefore revised to provide for Gonzales’s confirmation of their actions.

What was this all about?

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that—as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements—the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.

In other words, Karl Rove is to be empowered to hire and fire within the administration of justice at will. And we see how he was using this power, with two young political hacks as his enablers. Waas:

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

And what does this say of Gonzales and his attitude towards the Department of Justice and his office? It was an extraordinary betrayal. As Gonzales’s harshest critics said from the beginning, he was no more than an enabler. That was his function as counsel to the President, and then that was his function as attorney general.

Finally, consider the fact that this “highly confidential” document was never turned over to Congressional investigators, notwithstanding that it was clearly demanded. Neither does it appear to have been scheduled as a document as to which some privilege was claimed. All this suggests a conscious decision to obstruct a Congressional investigation, and makes more imperative the need for appointment of a special prosecutor.