Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice.

• Author: Goldfarb, Ronald

Political Fixes: and Other Misadventures of The U.S. Department of Justice David Burnham Scribner, $27.50 By Ronald Goldfarb

The very name "Department of Justice" is ironic, the caustic critic H. L. Mencken claimed in 1926, calling the body a "fecund source of oppression and corruption." "It is hard to recall an administration in which it was not the center of grave scandal," he reported, recommending that a realistic history be written. Seventy years later, the veteran investigative reporter, David Burnham, has taken up the challenge in Above The Law.

Burnham took on an assignment that is both overdue and difficult, for the 126-year-old Justice Department is formidable in size, scope, and complexity. Charged with the constitutional duty to see that laws are faithfully executed, the president appoints an attorney general who oversees more than 100,000 employees, including 7,000 litigating lawyers, and a $12 billion dollar department including such disparate functions as prison management, immigration management, and the F.B.I. The attorney general oversees more patronage jobs than any other Cabinet member.

The "grave scandals" noted by Mencken are due in no small part to the department's complexity--and its split loyalty to both the law itself and to the administration. Presidents traditionally have appointed political advisers to the post and have used attorneys general as private counselors in troubled times. President Andrew Jackson told his attorney general, Roger Taney, to solve a problem in the way he wanted "or I will find an attorney general who will." Of course, in running the Department of Justice, there are politics, and there are politics; there is an important distinction to be made. When I was at Justice during the Kennedy administration, we drastically cut the Internal Security Division and expanded the organized crime section to reflect the changed values of the times and the preferences of a new administration. Such shifts of policy are inevitable and proper. Soiling the administration of justice with party politics, on the other hand, by targeting opponents or forgiving allies, is intolerable. It happens, at times, but it never should.

On this subject, as with several others in an otherwise convincing and eye-opening book, Burnham is more scolding than edifying. And sometimes he over-stretches to make his point. For example, he cites an instance when some Pennsylvania politicians called Robert Kennedy about a pending...