WASHINGTON — Scores of highly credentialed young lawyers and law students were denied interviews for coveted positions at the Justice Department because of an illegal screening process that took political and ideological views and affiliations into account rather than merit, Justice Department investigators concluded in a report released Tuesday.
In 2006, some applicants for sought-after jobs in the department's honors and summer intern programs were rejected because they were members of the American Constitution Society or Planned Parenthood or because they expressed concern about gender discrimination in the military, the report says.
Other students or graduates brushed aside include a University of Alabama law graduate, ranked sixth in the class, who had written a paper on the detention of foreigners under the USA Patriot Act; a Yale Law School graduate who was fluent in Arabic; and a Georgetown law student who had worked for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign.
Justice Department officials told investigators that the applicants were turned down because of academic performance. But most if not all of them had superior records, and those explanations were not credible, the report says.
Career employees and other senior officials complained openly about bias in the process, but their concerns were ignored, investigators found.
The findings are contained in the first of several official reports expected on the tenure of Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, and on allegations that the longtime friend and confidant of President Bush allowed political considerations to influence the hiring of career employees and other functions at the Justice Department.
Though the report does not directly accuse Gonzales of misconduct, two Justice officials were found to have violated federal civil service law and department regulations in connection with the screening process. Two other officials were criticized for exercising poor judgment and failing to aggressively address the issue of illegal hiring after concerns of career employees surfaced.
Investigators said they were unable to conclude who gave the orders to start employing a political litmus test, though the report says some of the people interviewed pointed to former Gonzales aide Monica M. Goodling, who resigned last year after acknowledging in sworn testimony that she might have violated the law in evaluating applicants for career positions. Many of the records associated with the interviews were destroyed, the report says.
