NYT: Congress Expands Scope of Inquiries Into Justice Department Practices and Politics

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Congress Expands Scope of Inquiries Into Justice Department Practices and Politics
By CARL HULSE and SCOTT SHANE
Published: March 25, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 24 — Justice Department officials went before Congress this week to acknowledge that mistakes were made. Lawmakers remained skeptical of the accounts and demanded better answers. Members of Congress hinted at potential abuse of power and threatened to rein in the department.

What left members of Congress upset was not the ouster of eight United States attorneys, whose dismissal has embroiled the department for weeks. It was another subject altogether: the mishandling of national security letters used by the F.B.I. in investigations to obtain sensitive information without judicial oversight.

While the brewing showdown between Congress and the Bush administration over the dismissed prosecutors is the high-profile clash, it is just one area where the Democrats, with some Republican help, have put Justice Department operations under a microscope.

In the past few days alone, Democrats have challenged Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, and by extension the White House, not only on the firings and the national security letters, but also on the agency’s record of civil rights enforcement, the accusation of political interference in tobacco litigation and redistricting cases, the status of pending corruption cases, and Mr. Gonzales’s role in halting an in-house inquiry into the domestic surveillance program.

Lawmakers in both parties have said mounting dissatisfaction with his department is at the heart of Mr. Gonzales’s loss of support on Capitol Hill. In the eyes of many in the House and Senate, the mishandling of the prosecutors was not an isolated incident. Some even consider the extensive use of national security letters a more fundamental threat to the attorney general’s continuing tenure, since Republicans are as unhappy about it as Democrats....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/washington/25justice.html