Calling it "inappropriate," ex-Attorney General says he wouldn't take monitor contract

By Matt Friedman, PolitickerNJ.com Reporter

Former U.S. Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach thinks that former Attorney General John Ashcroft is a good man – but not necessarily deserving of a federal monitoring contract worth up to $58 million.

“He’s a pleasant enough man. I doubt that he was an editor of the law review or a Supreme Court clerk or something of that kind -- those are the kinds of standards I have,” said Katzenbach, who lives in Princeton and served as Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson between 1965 and 1966.

The contract in question is a position Christopher J. Christie, New Jersey’s United States Attorney, gave Ashcroft, his former boss, monitoring Zimmer Holdings, a medical implant company that admitted paying kickbacks to doctors to use its products. By agreeing to take on a federal monitor and pay a $311 million settlement, the company avoided prosecution.

Although Katzenbach acknowledged that there could be circumstances to the appointment that he’s unfamiliar with, to him it looks political -- especially considering that the Justice Department should appear the most free of political considerations.

“When you give people government contracts, there’s usually a bidding on the contract, or if there isn’t a bidding on it, you’ve got a reason why there isn’t,” Katzenbach told PolitickerNJ.com. “…If Interior wants to go give a former Interior Secretary some big job, people can say that’s just politics and maybe it’s not that serious. But when the Department of Justice starts doing it, it suggests other political things, and that seems to me to be as wrong as it can be.”

Katzenbach said that he can’t remember how common the appointment of federal monitors was when he held the office, and could only recall assigning monitors to oversee the sale of American subsidiaries of German companies that were seized when World War II broke out.

And as a former Attorney General, Katzenbach said that he would not accept such a contract.

“I suppose like any human being, I would be tempted, but I would think it was inappropriate,” he said.
Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach with President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

MATT FRIEDMAN is a PolitickerNJ.com Reporter and can be reached via email at matt@politicsnj.com.

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Comments

Cover Ups

posted by Eric

Who cares what Nicholas Katzenbach thinks. He wanted to cover up the JFK assasination before an investigation was done. Katzenbach is a world class hack, whose sense of justice is seriously perverted.

http://www.redjersey.net/2007/08/28/nicholas-katzenbach-speaks/

01/15/08 8:58 am

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Wrong

posted by njredblue

You are right about Katzenback, and even he knows what Christie and Ashcroft did was wrong.

01/15/08 9:22 am

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What kind of standards must one have

posted by HaroldPunani

to carry water for a disgrace like Bill Clinton?

01/15/08 9:28 am

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He's Back! Qwerty, Where Are You?

posted by Commentor

Oh, please! Yet another “tut-tutting” appearance from the lord of the Princetonly liberal realm, emeritus head of the “best and the brightest,” crowd, who all ham-fistedly dragged us into the fight in Viet-Nam, and then turned tail and became the screaming, critical opposition the moment a Republican Administration was elected back in 1968.

Hell, come to think of it, most of them didn’t even wait until the end of the Johnson Administration to start squawking. But Nick did; he was quietly holding onto his Administration jobs as the Attorney General for Johnson, and then as Under Secretary of State until they put the lights out when the Nixon Administration move in.

Mr. Katzenback’s last whining and opining appearance here, back in late August of last year, was a thinly disguised partisan challenge to the credentials of Michael Chertoff to be the Attorney General, on the utterly laughable grounds that, as an attorney, Mr. Chertoff had not openly criticized the Bush Administration for it’s Iraq policy!

Read for yourself!

Yet while Attorney General himself, and then as Under Sec’y of State under Dean Rusk, mum was the word from old "St. Nick", even though we now know that he and his close pal Robert McNamara shared the same pessimistic prospects of success in Southeast Asia, while thousands of American troops were being drafted and sent over to fight and die there.

But Nicky hung in there to the last day of the Johnson Administration. Didn’t want to lose those cushy jobs, I guess. Different times, different standards, Nick?

Once again, before questioning someone else’s ethics, Mr. Katzenbach should first man-up to his utter failure then to do what he now demands of others. It took Robert McNamara 30 years to come up with his explanation. Where is your mea culpa, Nick?

Embarrassingly, Nick seems to be too busy taking political pot shots. Now he’s going after an effort by the United States Attorney, Chris Christie, to clean up the unbelievable level of political corruption in this State, the lion’s share of which is Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.

And where is Nick on that? Politically attacking the monitoring arrangement with John Ashcroft’s firm, which he now sniffs he would have never taken.

And what are his complaints about John Ashcroft? He’s not very specific about that, but one of them actually seems to be that John was probably not an editor on the Law Review while he was at the University of Chicago, as Katzenbach had been while he was at Yale. I kid you not!

I doubt that he was an editor of the law review or a Supreme Court clerk or something of that kind -- those are the kinds of standards I have,” said Katzenbach, who lives in Princeton and served as Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson between 1965 and 1966.

Talk about truly tiresome elitism! Qwerty, where are you? He's back!

by Trochilus

01/15/08 2:48 pm