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Civil service

By Ken Silverstein

In January of 2005, top Justice Department officials began making plans to remove up to 20 percent of the nation’s U.S. attorneys—those deemed not to be “loyal Bushies,” in an apt phrase from a recently disclosed email by Kyle Sampson, then counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft and subsequently chief of staff to his successor, Alberto Gonzales. Sampson himself was a loyal Bushie of the highest order (at least until he resigned in March, after a scandal erupted over the administration’s firing of eight federal prosecutors). Sampson had come to Washington to work for Utah Senator Orrin Hatch; he signed up with the Bush transition team following the 2000 election—reportedly recommended by Elizabeth Cheney, the vice president’s daughter, who was a law school classmate—and served as associate counsel to President George Bush before moving on to the Justice Department.

In short, Sampson was a political hack, a man who owes his government career entirely to his loyal soldiery in the army of the Republican Party. Such is the common trajectory of countless political appointees during the Bush years, the most notorious example being Michael Brown, who oversaw the destruction of New Orleans while director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown’s chief of staff at FEMA was the equally hapless Patrick Rhode, thirty-six, who had once been called upon to move large numbers of men and matériel—as deputy director of advance operations for Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. The credentials of Claire Buchan, who in 2005 was named chief of staff at the Commerce Department, had been her work as a press flack at the Treasury Department under George H.W. Bush and at the White House under his son. The list goes on and on.

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SEE ALSO: Attorneys general; Civil service; Coalition Provisional Authority; Discipline; Bush, George W.; Influence; 2001-; Officials and employees; Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ); Science and state; Selection and appointment

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