Private: Gonzales Delegated Firing Power to Goodling & Sampson

A newly disclosed order reveals that Attorney General Gonzales made an unprecedented delegation of authority to two aides who have since resigned:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

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. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

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. . . .

A senior Justice Department official, who did not know of Gonzales's delegation of authority until contacted by National Journal, said that it posed a serious threat to the integrity of the criminal-justice system because it gave Sampson, Goodling, and the White House control over the hiring of senior officials in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, which oversees all politically sensitive public corruption cases, at the same time that they held authority to hire and fire U.S. attorneys.

This revelation comes just days after the Justice Department announced that it would no longer placing low-level hiring decisions in the hands of political appointees.  As Paul Kiel argues, however, this decision may not change the ideological make up of future hires:

But here's the real question. John Ashcroft put political appointees in charge of the hiring process in 2002. And for four years the department has been pumped full of Federalist Society members, so that in some departments (e.g. the Civil Rights Division), the career staff are indistinguishable from the political appointees. With Congress bearing down, the leadership in the Justice Department has finally decided to relinquish control of the hiring. But perhaps that decision is made easier because the mission has already been accomplished?