The Wall Street Journal-20080123-Politics - Economics- Mukasey Shows Independent Streak- Big Test Awaits Attorney General When He Testifies Before Senate Panel
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Politics & Economics: Mukasey Shows Independent Streak; Big Test Awaits Attorney General When He Testifies Before Senate Panel
Washington -- Arriving at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's holiday party last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey went directly to the registration table for surnames starting with M. Staff members gently advised him there was no need to register. He is the boss at the FBI, too.
Mr. Mukasey was picked as the country's 81st attorney general to restore morale and independence to a department tarnished by the tumultuous tenure of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales. In his first two months, Mr. Mukasey has behaved like a Washington outsider, allowing him to stick a finger in the eye of the Washington establishment.
Last month, he shot down demands from senators for an independent investigation into the destruction of detainee-interrogation videotapes by the Central Intelligence Agency. He instead ordered a criminal inquiry led by a tough Connecticut prosecutor who will remain inside Mr. Mukasey's chain of command and will lead a team largely drawn from Justice's headquarters.
Mr. Mukasey's aides are enforcing his orders to restrict contact with the White House. Administration officials had worked closely with the department under Mr. Gonzales, including directing details of the attorney general's speeches. Mr. Gonzales, a close friend and former lawyer to President Bush, resigned under pressure in August amid accusations he allowed political operatives at the White House to taint Justice affairs.
"On the one hand, I'm nominated by the president," Mr. Mukasey said in an interview aboard a jet en route to Mexico City last week. "On the other hand, the oath is to protect and defend the Constitution. And so that's my job on a day-to-day basis."
As for standing up to the White House and Congress, he said: "I don't feel obligated to show my independence, or go swaggering about to display it."
Mr. Mukasey's portfolio includes some of the White House's most controversial policies, including the legal underpinnings of wiretapping, interrogation methods and gun laws. As a result, it is an open question how far he can carry his independent streak, given the sensitivity of these matters. The attorney general is courting lawmakers and has already softened in some areas, such as backing off supporting a new system to try terrorist detainees.
Marc Mukasey, who heads the white-collar-defense practice at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP in New York, said his father is most comfortable being "a regular guy." He recalled seeking advice before starting work as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in New York's southern district, where his father worked decades before.
"He said, 'Can you get a pen and paper?'" Marc Mukasey recalled. "I said, 'Sure.' He said, 'Here's the words of wisdom: Don't screw up.'"
The 66-year-old Bronx native, previously chief judge of the U.S. District Court in New York's Southern District, remains a nonresident in Washington. His wife lives in New York, near their grandsons, while he commutes weekly.
Mr. Mukasey is conservative not only in his politics but in words and manner. As a judge, he assigned new law clerks George Orwell's 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," a denunciation of the "slovenliness" of contemporary written English, which the author said caused vagueness and dishonesty in political discourse.
Since arriving in Washington, he has expressed puzzlement at the alphabet soup of acronyms and jargon, notably phrases as "run the traps" or "outside my lane." Recently, one friend "was ragging me mercilessly," he recalled, after noting that Mr. Mukasey slipped into Washingtonese during his confirmation hearings. (He said he couldn't answer a question because he hadn't yet been "read in" to, or briefed on, a classified program.)
A big test will come next week when he goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which narrowly approved his confirmation in November. Democrats and Republicans alike said at the time they expected more complete answers after he was briefed on the Bush administration's antiterror strategies.
During confirmation hearings, Mr. Mukasey gave some vague responses to the question of whether an interrogation technique known as waterboarding constitutes torture. "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional," he said. Told by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse that his answer was "semantics," Mr. Mukasey responded, "Sorry."
Asked last week whether he was prepared to answer senators' questions on waterboarding, Mr. Mukasey responded: "When? At this point in time?"
Mr. Mukasey said his response was an example of what the late New York sports columnist, Murray Kempton, would have described as "constabulary style" or one that "aims at precision but never achieves clarity."
Reminded that he hadn't answered the question, Mr. Mukasey said: "Yes, I've been read into the program, but that's part of a process. I said I would look at the program. Look at the letters. And give my answers. I haven't yet figured out precisely when and precisely how. I understand that the time is coming."
The arrival of Mr. Mukasey has paid dividends for the Justice Department, with fewer negative headlines like those that dogged his predecessor. He has been helped by moves completed on his watch that were put in the works by the department's career lawyers. Repeating an analogy he has used in the past to show humility and appreciation for his staff, Mr. Mukasey said: "When I was a little kid, I used to sit on my father's shoulders and go 'look how tall I am.' I feel the same way here, I get to be very tall because I am sitting on a lot of shoulders."
Rhode Island Sen. Whitehouse, whose question on waterboarding caused Mr. Mukasey so much trouble, cheers the attorney general for issuing new rules for how Justice officials can interact with the White House.
"The preliminary steps he has taken are good ones," the senator said in an interview. "Reinstating the firewall between DOJ and the White House was a very important structural repair and a very important symbol."
Mr. Mukasey is likely to accommodate in other areas, too. After he retired as a judge and returned to private practice in New York, he wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in which he raised questions about the judicial system's capability of dealing with terror cases. He asked whether a new system to deal with terror cases might be a better way to go. Now, Mr. Mukasey minimizes those arguments and said he plans to "work with what we've got."
