The Department of Justice and “that curious word, Honor”

By Scott Horton

For George Washington, “honor” was a sacred term. It meant the duty of a citizen always to conduct himself in a manner consistent with the highest values of the society in which he lived. Consequently, the “honor” of a citizen-soldier of the American Republic was something very different from the “honor” of a subject of the British Crown—a concept he drove home repeatedly in his exhortations to the soldiers and officers of the Continental Army. And, according to David Hackett Fischer and several other historians of the period, this attitude made an important contribution to the successful conduct of the Revolutionary War, and thus to the founding of the Republic. I discuss these facts and the role of the work of Joseph Addison in the Revolutionary War era development of the concept of “honor” in greater depth here.

What does “honor” mean to Alberto Gonzales and his cronies at the Department of Justice? In the words of the Good Book, let us judge them by their fruits.

Even the “Honors Program” Interns Are Hacks. I previously described a discussion with one of my old law professors who recounted how his daughter secured a position at Justice through the Honors Program. The rest of the members of the program were Monica Goodling clones, and at length his daughter discovered that she had been accepted because the hiring officer confused her undergraduate institution with a religious right institution with a similar name. Now we learn that this accurately describes the corruption of the Department’s Honors Program—namely, under the oversight of Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, it was used to recruit and introduce political hacks. Today, the Washington Post reports that on-going scrutiny of political hackery at the Justice Department has led to reform: hacks will no longer be involved in the selection of the “Honors Program” interns. They will now be influencing the hiring process from behind the scenes.

The Attorney General’s Award for Fraud Prevention last year went to none other than Robert E. Coughlin II, a senior official of the Criminal Division whose resignation was announced yesterday in recognition of his “exceptional efforts to prosecute white collar crime.” Coughlin is now wrapped up in the criminal investigation surrounding Jack Abramoff—he is tightly linked to a key investigation target. The Abramoff investigation is the largest and most important white collar crime investigation pending in the office . . . but somehow I doubt this is what got him his award. Still, one can’t be certain—this is the Gonzales Justice Department.

Honors for Jim Crow Law-Making. One of the Honors Programs hires was Joshua Rogers, an Ole Miss law graduate closely tied to Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr., whose record on voting rights matters drew strong condemnation in Congress. Predictably Rogers was assigned to the Civil Rights Division and put to work on voting rights issues. When he was the only lawyer in the division to support the position of Brad Scholzman with respect to a Georgia voter ID law—later struck down by a judge as “Jim Crow legislation”—he was amply rewarded with a cash bonus for his fervent efforts to undermine voting rights. The Washington Post reports details of the case today.

So, let us summarize the values which the term “honor” signifies in the Gonzales Department of Justice:

• Selection of candidates for civil service based on their unquestioned fidelity to the Republican Party and its leadership, not based on academic performance, professional experience and other objective employment criteria
• Proximity to a criminal conspiracy which your own department is investigating, and placing personal loyalty to a fellow Republican above the duty to pursue justice
• Subversion of voting rights to assure the long-term institutionalization of political control for the Republican Party

This is not what George Washington had in mind.