The Internet can do what now?

There’s not a lot to laugh about the politicization of civil service hires at the Justice Department.  OK, I lied.  There is one thing that seems pretty funny to me.  If Al Gore invented the Internet, then it appears that the Bush administration has invented the concept of searching the Internet.  At least, that’s how Eric Lichtblau’s story in the New York Times on the hiring scandal at the Justice Department reads: 

According to the report, officials at the White House first developed a method of searching the Internet to glean the political leanings of a candidate and introduced it at a White House seminar called The Thorough Process of Investigation. Justice Department officials then began using the technique to search for key phrases or words in an applicant’s background, like “abortion,” “homosexual,” “Florida recount,” or “guns.”

Whoa!!!  That’s way too hi-tech for me to understand.  The text of the report provides more detail.  Apparently, White House liaison Jan Williams deployed (and then relayed to Monica Goodling) the following string for Nexis searches for DOJ candidates: 

 

[first name of a candidate] and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

 

As the report later reveals, however, the darned Internet can trap the searchers as well as the searchees: 

When we showed Williams this e-mail and the attached search string, she said she did not recall sending it to Goodling. She also said she did not recognize the search string, and that she did not know where the list of search terms came from. At the end of her interview, we raised the issue again and Williams repeated her assertion that she did not remember using the search string.

The day after her interview, Williams sent us an e-mail stating that she “thought about the research string and have some information that I want to share with you.” She wrote that there had been a political vacancy in the Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division in December 2005, that a law professor was a candidate, and that Sampson asked her to research the law professor’s writings.Williams stated that she “called the researcher in the White House Officeof Presidential Personnel to get some research tips.” Williams said theresearcher sent her a “Lexis Nexis research string,” and that she edited the string to remove “words like homosexual” and then used it. Williamsclaimed that she only used the search string that one time, “never everused it to reach Immigration Judges,” and that the string she sent to Goodling did not contain “words like ‘homosexual.’”….

[W]e obtained information from LexisNexis that Williams used this search string multiple times on 3 days in November and December 2005 and January 2006. Williams used the search string to research 25 people, of whom 23 were candidates for the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women. One of the other two candidates was the person Williams referred to in her e-mail to us after we interviewed Williams. We could not determine the identity of the remaining person Williams researched using the search string. None of these people were candidates for IJ or BIA positions. All of the searches Williams conducted contained search terms such as “gay!” and “homosexual!” When we asked Williams about the LexisNexis searches, she stated that she did not recall researching the candidates for the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women or using the string search other than the one time discussed above.

 

 

 

For those readers concerned about what information the Interwebs possesses about you — and whether you can remove it — go check out this Alex Beam article in the Boston Globe.