Mukasey trumpets reform as his legacy at Justice

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By Ben Conery

The Justice Department was in turmoil when Michael B. Mukasey took over more than a year ago, embroiled in headline-grabbing controversies that ultimately led to the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

Since then, Mr. Mukasey has guided a steady, if not quiet, course. And that may have been the idea.

"After the disaster that was the Gonzales tenure, Mukasey was just what the doctor ordered," said Tom Fitton, president of the conservative Judicial Watch. "His tenure was remarkable for being unremarkable."

On Thursday, in the waning days of his term as the nation's 81st attorney general, Mr. Mukasey gave a farewell speech to the department's employees.

Even his speech struck the sober tone that has marked his tenure.

"It has been an eventful 14 months, some events entirely satisfying, others perhaps less so - but all with some form of satisfaction," he said.

But Mr. Mukasey wasn't above injecting a bit of self-effacing humor, joking that some in attendance were there to see the answer to the question: "Can the attorney general get through a speech and remain vertical?" A reference to a frightening, but ultimately minor, health scare in which he collapsed while delivering a speech in November.

Mr. Mukasey, a New York native and retired federal judge, said he would leave it to others to assess his performance as attorney general, but he praised the department's employees and pointed out what he saw as several accomplishments, some relating directly to lingering criticisms from the Gonzales tenure, including charges of cronyism.

The attorney general put career staff members, instead of political appointees, in charge of hiring for entry-level lawyers and the summer law-intern program. An investigation by the department's inspector general found that under Mr. Gonzales, President Bush's appointees improperly used political considerations when hiring for those two programs.

"As a result of these reforms, I am confident that the department is thriving today, and that the institutional problems we identified will not recur," he said. "As a result of these reforms, distracting outside criticism has waned, and attention has returned to where it should be: to the valuable and skillful work that all of you are doing, and have always done."