Prometheus 6: Where's the Justice?

October 31, 2003

Where's the Justice?

Want to see an interesting story about the Justice Department hiding stuff?

Critical Study Minus Criticism of Justice Dept.
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 ï¿½ An internal report that harshly criticized the Justice Department's diversity efforts was edited so heavily when it was posted on the department's Web site two weeks ago that half of its 186 pages, including the summary, were blacked out.

The deleted passages, electronically recovered by a self-described "information archaeologist" in Tucson, portrayed the department's record on diversity as seriously flawed, specifically in the hiring, promotion and retention of minority lawyers.

The unedited report, completed in June 2002 by the consulting firm KPMG, found that minority employees at the department, which is responsible for enforcing the country's civil rights laws, perceive their own workplace as biased and unfair.

WIth Ashcroft in charge, is anyone surprised? Surprised at the bias or the hiding of the report? Half the report blacked out. ["dag, man. they couldn't even use wite-out, man...they had to BLACK that shit out, know what I'm saying?. It's racist, dawg, know what I'm saying?"]

And check THIS:

Even complimentary conclusions were deleted, like one that said "attorneys across demographic groups believe that the Department is a good place to work" and another that said "private industry cites DOJ as a trend-setter for diversity."

Trend-setter. That's kinda values-neutral, yo.

And it's not complimentary. It just says private industry will follow Justice's lead, figuring you can't be breaking the law if Justice is doing it too.

See why we didn't want Ashcroft's ass in the to begin with? Trend-setter.

Now, let me show you some REAL scary shit.

Another deleted part said efforts to promote diversity "will take extraordinarily strong leadership" from the attorney general's office

Who, exactly, are they trying to kid?

Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said that portions of the report, and even its conclusions, were "deliberative and predecisional" and so could be excluded from the public report under provisions in the Freedom of Information Act.

I haven't read the report yet. I need to, and will. Already downloaded it. But you have to admit, the news report is a bad sign…and all too in keeping with the way the whole administration functions.

Posted by P6 at October 31, 2003 12:13 PM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2161

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