Stop me if you’ve heard this one: respected government official gets demoted for being objective, while another official gets promoted for sticking to the Bush script. It’s happened yet again.
The Bush administration is replacing the director of a small but critical branch of the Justice Department, months after he complained that senior political officials at the department were seeking to play down newly compiled data on the aggressive police treatment of black and Hispanic drivers.
The demotion of the official, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, whom President Bush named in 2001 to lead the Bureau of Justice Statistics, caps more than three years of simmering tensions over charges of political interference at the agency. And it has stirred anger and tumult among many Justice Department statisticians, who say their independence in analyzing important law enforcement data has been compromised.
The details in this one are pretty painful. Greenfeld, a 23-year veteran of handling government data, saw that the Bureau of Justice Statistics was concealing data on racial profiling that has been occurring at traffic lights nationwide. Researchers had found that racial groups are routinely treated different after being stopped by police.
Because BJS data is considered highly important to law enforcement officials, policy makers, social scientists, and journalists, Greenfeld insisted that the numbers be objective and that political considerations be ignored.
That didn’t go over well.
Political supervisors within the Office of Justice Programs ordered Mr. Greenfeld to delete certain references to the disparities from a news release that was drafted to announce the findings, according to more than a half-dozen Justice Department officials with knowledge of the situation. The officials, most of whom said they were supporters of Mr. Greenfeld, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters.
Mr. Greenfeld refused to delete the racial references, arguing to his supervisors that the omissions would make the public announcement incomplete and misleading. Instead, the Justice Department opted not to issue a news release on the findings and posted the report online.
Some statisticians said that decision all but assured the report would get lost amid the avalanche of studies issued by the government. A computer search of news articles found no mentions of the study.
Shortly thereafter, Greenfeld was threatened with dismissal and the possible loss of some pension benefits. He is now expected to leave the BJS for a lesser position at another agency.
And then there’s Tracy Henke, who oversaw Greenfeld’s statistics as the acting assistant attorney general. Apparently, she decided to do a little creative editing to the announcement about the racial-profiling data.
[T]he references in the draft to higher rates of searches and use of force for blacks and Hispanics were crossed out by hand, with a notation in the margin that read, “Do we need this?” A note affixed to the edited draft, which the officials said was written by Ms. Henke, read “Make the changes,” and it was signed “Tracy.” That led to a fierce dispute after Mr. Greenfeld refused to delete the references, officials said.
Where’s Henke now? Well, with Greenfeld being forced to move on, Henke, naturally, has been promoted to a senior position at the Department of Homeland Security.
Tell the truth and protect the integrity of public information? The Bush gang will cut your career short. Play ball with the White House political agenda? Get the promotion you’ve been waiting for.
I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve seen this happen.