Posted August 27, 2007 by J. Gerald Hebert

Restoring Justice at Justice

I felt a mixed sense of relief and sadness when I heard this morning that Alberto Gonzales was resigning as Attorney General.  As a twenty-one year veteran of the Department of Justice (1973-1994), I have been deeply concerned about the need to restore integrity and competence to the Department.  So I was relieved that Gonzales is leaving because it opens up a window of opportunity to do this.  But I was sad because I know during his tenure, and John Ashcroft before him, good lawyers were driven away out of frustration; and those career prosecutors who are still there tell me they very much feel as if they are on a rudderless ship. 

It will not be easy to restore the Department’s integrity and effectiveness.  So what happens next, and what type of person might be in a position to do this ?  For me, the answer is easy, because I went through something similar to this more than thirty years ago.

I recall soon after I joined the Department of Justice in 1973 that the Department faced a period of upheaval and turmoil.  It was October 1973 and one Saturday night, while I was on travel working on a school desegregation case in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, I got a call that Elliot Richardson, Bill Ruckelshaus and Archibald Cox were gone.  As the Washington Post reported on Sunday, October 23, 1973:

“In the most traumatic government upheaval of the Watergate crisis, President Nixon yesterday discharged Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus.

“The President also abolished the office of the special prosecutor and turned over to the Justice Department the entire responsibility for further investigation and prosecution of suspects and defendants in Watergate and related cases.

“Shortly after the White House announcement, FBI agents sealed off the offices of Richardson and Ruckelshaus in the Justice Department and at Cox's headquarters in an office building on K Street NW.”

In what has come to be known as “the Saturday night massacre,” the firing of Cox and the resignations of Richardson and Ruckelshaus sent shock waves throughout the nation, and most certainly to every corner of DOJ, even to the most junior of Department attorneys in Rapides Parish, Louisiana.   

When I returned to Washington from my few weeks in Louisiana, I found a Department traumatized by what had happened.  Those of us serving as career prosecutors were demoralized and many wondered if it was worth it to stick it out. 

But most of us did stick it out, and we were glad we did.  What happened two years later in 1975 not only showed the resilience of the Department of Justice, but more importantly it showed what a difference leadership can make.  The reason was simple: the appointment by former President Ford of Edward Levi to serve as Attorney General.  Though he would serve only a couple of years (1975-1977), Attorney General Levi rescued the Department of Justice from the great and bitter difficulties of the Watergate scandal almost overnight.  (President Ford later acknowledged that it was Donald Rumsfeld who recommended his fellow Chicagoan, Ed Levi, for the Attorney General post).  

How did he do this ?  Like any nominee, Ed Levi had a history.  And that history included many outstanding qualities, such as honesty, integrity, and intellect--qualities so desperately needed at the Department of Justice today.  Ed Levi brought with him a reputation of evenhandedness and nonpartisanship, too, a quality that the next Attorney general must have to be effective.  Ed Levi also brought with him an established reputation in the legal profession: he possessed wisdom, a powerful intellect, and wit.  He was not a politician.  He was a lawyer’s lawyer.  When it became known to the trial attorneys throughout the Department that Ed Levi, the legal giant, was coming in to serve as the top lawyer in the federal government, trust and confidence in the Department began to be restored almost instantly. 

Attorney General Levi managed the Department with a firm hand, which was so needed in the aftermath of ineffectiveness and incompetence, and is so desperately needed today. I recall early on in his tenure that he gave a speech, I believe it was in the Great Hall at the Justice Department, where he made it clear that the Department of Justice would once again become the respected institution we all wanted it to be.  One of Ed Levi’s first steps was to give assurances to all of us DOJ attorneys that he would do his best to support us in carrying out the Department’s mission, and our mission was to do so evenhanded and fair.  When that message came from someone with his credentials and reputation, you knew it was not just another speech.  You felt he meant it, and he did.  

When President Ford called Ed Levi to the Oval Office and asked him to be the Attorney General, he asked Levi what was the most pressing need at the Department of Justice.  Levi didn’t hesitate.  He said that it needed a non-political person as its head.  He added that such a person could help regain the trust that been abused by domestic spying and the general erosion of ethics that had occurred.

That type of a person is needed now.  Someone who deeply values and respects the Constitution and the rule of law.  Someone who does not see the machinery of law enforcement as a weapon to be used against one political party or its supporters.  Someone who will listen to and respect career prosecutors and staff.  Someone who will restore the Department’s well-deserved reputation as the greatest place in the world to be a lawyer.