was established in 1954 in compliance with regislation passed during an era characterized by the investigations of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis. (1946-57). The Civil Rights Division was created in 1957, in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education (see "Courts" box) and a Little Rock, Ark., school desegregation showdown between federal and state authorities. A Consumer Protection Division is under consideration in Congress now. (See Vol. I p. 61.)

Today, the department employs approximately 36,500 people-2,079 of them lawyers and has an appropriation for 1970 of $808.2 million. (See p. 90.)

ACTIVITIES

Attorney General Mitchell has said a number of times that the Justice Department is primarily a law enforcement agency. Once that is said, however, the question remains, "What does it do?" A listing of just a few happenings within the department over a period of two months last summer provides an insight into the variety of its functions:

The Civil Division settled an interior Department claim against the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the cost of cleaning up "Resurrection City," the SCLC agreeing to pay a nominal sum;

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released statistics showing that crime in the nation during the first six months of 1969 was up 9 per cent over the same period in 1968:

A Criminal Division attorney just out of law school broke the news to the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio that the Solicitor General had decided not to appeal a circuit court reversal of the U.S. attorney's prize conviction;

The Board of Parole denied the application for parole of former Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa;

Attorney General Mitchell met a delegation of blacks protesting the Justice Department's civil rights enforcement policies, and told them to "watch what we do, not what we say";

Immigration and Naturalization Service agents raided a Southern California citrus grove where illegal aliens had worked in the past picking fruit; they found illegal aliens working the grove again, but the owner chased the agents from his land with a bulldozer;

A liaison man from the Secret Service reported to the Deputy Attorney General's Office that the U.S. attorney in a California district had refused to prosecute a man arrested by the Secret Service for threatening the President; The Antitrust Division asked for a preliminary injunction to halt a merger of International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. and Hartford Fire Insurance Co.;

One hundred police officers representing all 50 states began a 12-week course at the FBI National Academy at Quantico, Va.;

The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration announced grants totaling $1 million to the nation's 11 largest cities to help finance special crime-control projects.

A great deal more occurred-some of it far more significant-but these 10 items provide some idea of the impact Justice Department activity can have on most areas of national life.

As the national government's law enforcement agency, the department is responsible for carrying out the mandates of Congress and the courts, as well as trying to influence what those mandates will be; as the government's legal representative, it prosecutes claims for the government, defends when others make claims against it and gives legal advice to the President and the rest of the executive branch; as a department with some discretion in setting priorities for the exercise of its authority, it can influence policy in a wide scope of governmental activity.

ORGANIZATION

The department has its base in Washington and gets its direction there, but about 25,700 of its employees-70 per cent-work elsewhere. Field offices include federal corrections facilities, offices of U.S. attorneys and marshals in each of the 93 judicial districts and FBI and immigration field offices. On a smaller scale, the Civil Rights Division, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, Antitrust Division and Community Relations Service have regional

offices, and the Criminal Division has organized crime "strike forces" operating in 11 major cities around the nation.

Enforcement divisions

Functionally, the department is broken down into law enforcement divisions and supporting bureaus and services. The principal enforcement divisions:

The Antitrust Division, largest of the enforcement divisions with 530 employees, guards the nation's free enterprise system against anticompetitive forces. It performs this task by enforcing the antitrust law, a loosely constructed body of statutes which permit extensive discretion to antitrust policy-makers. The division employs economists as well as lawyers to meet its enforcement obligations.

The Tax Division is the Internal Revenue Service's lawyer, representing the government in all controversies involving the payment of taxes. It is second largest of the enforcement divisions with 413 employees, including some 200 lawyers.

The Criminal Division is principally a supervisory organization, watching over U.S. attorneys' enforcement of most federal criminal law. Only its Organized Crime Section is normally involved in “front-line" investigations and prosecutions. Division lawyers often participate in the drafting of criminal legislation.

The Civil Division represents the United States in most civil legal matters. Its specific functions include defending suits against the government, pursuing government claims against individuals or groups and handling admiralty, patent and customs cases.

The Civil Rights Division enforces federal law aimed at providing equal rights for all citizens. Its specific areas of concern include education, employment, housing, voting, public accommodations and criminal interference with civil rights.

The Land and Natural Resources Division is a property lawyer charged with looking after the government's interests in nearly a third of the nation's total acreage. Its functions include protecting the government's interest in the land it now owns, acquiring new land and managing Indian properties.

The Internal Security Division, smallest of the enforcement divisions with 83 employees, enforces laws dealing with subversion and represents the government in such matters as employment security. Much of the law originally assigned to the division for enforcement has been stricken down as unconstitutional or repealed by Congress.

Two other Justice Department agencies have enforcement functions. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)-second in size in the department only to the FBI, with almost 7,000 employees-administers immigration law, including admission of aliens, prevention of illegal entry and prosecution of violators of the immigration law. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in the department only since 1968-regulates the legal traffic in drugs and prosecutes the illegal traffic.

Services

The department's principal law enforcement "service" agencies are the Federal Bureau of Investigation (see "FBI" box) and the Bureau of Prisons, which administers sentences imposed on federal offenders. The Bureau of Prisons has approximately 25,000 people in confinement in prisons, youth centers and a medical center.

The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), created in 1968 as part of an omnibus crime control program, administers the department's only major grant programs. The LEAA distributes federal funds to local law enforcement agencies to finance improvements in the quality of the criminal justice system.

Finally, the department has two small law firms in the service of the government, an Administrative Division to manage its own affairs, and several highly specialized agencies performing functions outside the department's main activity of enforcing the law.

Law firms

The Office of Legal Counsel is the Attorney General's own law firm, advising him and others in government, through him, on legal questions. The office also prepares briefs supporting opinions and positions of the Attorney General. The

Solicitor General's Office is the barrister for the United States before the Supreme Court, arguing and briefing government cases which reach that Court and deciding which cases to appeal.

Other agencies

The Administrative Division, headed by a career department employee rather than by a political appointee, manages personnel, budget, equipment, the library and records.

The specialized agencies include the Community Relations Service, which maintains liaison between the department and community leaders in areas with potential or imminent racial problems; the Board of Parole, which has sole authority to release prisoners before their terms expire (see p. 66); the Office of Consumer Counsel (now vacant), which in 1968 coordinated consumer protection efforts in the government; and the Office of Criminal Justice, established to assess the fairness of federal criminal justice but occupied recently with preparing a blueprint for an attack on crime in the District of Columbia.

CONSTITUENCY

Unlike some departments and agencies of the executive branch, the Justice Department has not become a captive of its constituencies. Indeed, as former Attorney General Ramsey Clark observes, "The department has no dominant constituency."

In plain language, that means the department does not deal with the same people all the time and does not, therefore, run the risk of becoming subservient to the interests of those whose conduct it regulates. The Justice Department's constituency in its law enforcement role consists of those accused of breaking the law and the victims of those breaches-including society.

This is not to say, however, that the department operates in a vacuum. Its decisions and actions reflect pressures from the White House, Congress, the Courts (see "Courts" box), other departments and agencies in the government, state and local governments, interest groups and the public. More than most other departments, Justice also exerts pressures-on government at all levels, on the courts, business and society.

WHITE HOUSE PRESSURES

The President is vitally interested in the department's activities: They may become the criteria for judging his Administration. Just as President Johnson's Justice Department became a major issue in the law-and-order campaign of 1968, so has President Nixon's department become the principal target of critics who say civil rights enforcement is lagging and dissent is being repressed.

President appoints

The President appoints the Attorney General and other policy-making officials in the department, and they serve at his pleasure. This power to appoint and discharge is the ultimate pressure.

As a rule, the President exercises it in his selection of people rather than by taking a role in the department's decisions. Mr. Nixon's choice of Mitchell to succeed Clark as Attorney General was probably the single most important influence on the department's behavior over the next four years. Mr. Nixon knows Mitchell, and Mitchell knows what the President wants from the department. In that situation, it is not important whether the Attorney General clears decisions and actions with the White House; he represents the White House. (For more on Mitchell, see box.)

This is not unique to the present Administration. President Kennedy's Attorney General-his brother Robert F. Kennedy-was at least as close to the White House as Mitchell is. And no one is appointed Attorney General who cannot be relied upon to adhere to the general policies of his President. Administration vehicle

The department becomes a vehicle for much of the President's program. In the Johnson years, Justice formulated a succession of civil rights legislation and originated the crime bill that created the LEAA. Mr. Nixon's department has drafted legislation to combat crime in the District of Columbia, to amend

voting rights provisions, to give law enforcers new weapons against organized crime and to consolidate federal drug control into a comprehensive program.

Enforcement policies and priorities also reflect the White House influence. Mr. Nixon's Antitrust Division has embarked on a campaign to scrutinize conglomerate mergers—an area earlier departments ignored—and his Civil Rights Division is emphasizing persuasion over legal coercion as the tool for achieving equal rights. The Criminal Division is concentrating on organized crime as never before. The department would be doing something in all its areas of responsibility regardless of the White House program, but the direction, speed and approach clearly reflect the Presidency.

CONGRESSIONAL PRESSURES

The Attorney General may be the President's man, but it is Congress that provides his paycheck. Furthermore, Congress created the very office of Attorney General and the Justice Department; has a veto (in the Senate) over appointments to policy-making positions; enacts laws for the department to enforce; and appropriates the funds on which it operates.

A number of politically sensitive issues-to Members of Congress as well as to the Administration-are within the department's jurisdiction: antitrust, crime, civil rights, for example. In addition, the department represents the government in most lawsuits against private citizens. Since voters hold their representatives in Congress responsible for all the actions of the federal government, the department feels individual and collective pressures from the legislative branch on behalf of constituents and the Members themselves. Requests from Members

Calls from individual Members of Congress are not infrequent, and requests sometimes border on impropriety. The department gives congressional inquiries high priority, but it claims not to be influenced by requests for action or inaction in specific cases.

Civil Rights Division chief Jerris Leonard acknowledged the pressures during a controversy surrounding the department's decision to seek a delay in adoption and implementation of desegregation plans in Mississippi in the fall of 1969.

...

“I think all of us realistically must realize,” Leonard said on Sept. 18, "that all government agencies are subjected to political pressures from all sides of the political spectrum. . . . The real question is whether decisions are sound." Leonard and the department were accused of basing the decision to seek delay on political considerations-including pressure from Mississippi Sen. John Stennis, D.

Indirect approach

Former Attorney General Clark said the more sophisticated Members of Congress do not approach the department directly, but channel their requests through high officials in the Administration. Thus, he suggested, a discussion of a particular case between department officials and a White House aide may in reality be the means by which a Senator conveys his wishes. Whatever the approach, when a Member speaks the department usually gives him a courteous audience. If the Member happens to occupy a prominent committee position, he will command even greater consideration.

The principal committees influencing the Justice Department are Judiciary and Appropriations in both houses.

Judiciary Committees

The Judiciary Committees and their subcommittees handle most of the substantive legislation dealing with Justice Department matters. In the Senate, the committee is headed by Sen. James O. Eastland, D-Miss., and has a decidedly conservative cast in its senior positions: Sens. John L. McClellan, DArk., Sam J. Ervin, Jr., D-N.C., and Roman L. Hruska, R-Neb.

Also influential on the committee, however, are Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, Pa., and Democrats Philip A. Hart, Mich., and Edward M. Kennedy, Mass. While the committee's liberal bloc is seldom able to win committee votes, its minority reports occasionally prevail on the floor.

A recent example was the Senate's Nov. 21 rejection of Mr. Nixon's nomination of Judge Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr. to the Supreme Court. The committee approved the nomination, 10-7, but dissenting committee members-led by

Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind.-engineered its defeat on the floor. The Justice Department had worked for the nomination both in its inception as the President's adviser on judicial appointments and during the Senate's confirmation proceedings-its Office of Legal Counsel producing extensive briefs on the nominee's behalf. (See Vol. I p. 218.)

Too much help-The Judiciary Committee sometimes gives the department more than it asks. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 was essentially a Justice Department bill in the beginning; but by the time McClellan's Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures rewrote it to McClellan's liking, the Johnson Administration had serious misgivings about it. The department's principal interest in that bill was creation of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) and authorization of major funding to help local officials combat urban crime. The bill as enacted did get the LEAA under way (although it made the states rather than the cities the principal recipients of funds). But it also authorized law enforcement procedures that were offensive to Attorney General Clark: broader authority to use wiretaps and electronic surveillance, and congressional encouragement to sidestep Supreme Court decisions forbidding the use of confessions and line-up identifications obtained without strict adherence to constitutional safeguards.

Clark ignored this statutory authority to do what he considered unconstitutional, and he was burned for it: In the 1968 Presidential campaign, Mr. Nixon made an issue of Clark's failure to use all the resources at his disposal to combat crime.

Cooperation-The committee can work closely with the department, however, when their interests are similar. McClellan, during the first session of the 91st Congress, engineered a comprehensive organized crime bill (S 30) through committee (see Vol. I p. 321) with the department's help. The Senate passed the bill on Jan. 23. (See p. 214.)

Important subcommittees in Senate Judiciary include McClellan's; the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly Legislation (Hart); the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights (Ervin); the Subcommittee on Internal Security (Eastland); and the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (Sen. Thomas J. Dodd, D-Conn.).

The House Judiciary Committee has a more liberal leadership, particularly on civil rights matters: Rep. Emanuel Celler, D-N.Y., is chairman, and Rep. William M. McCulloch, R-Ohio, is the ranking minority member.

Blocking bills-Celler, first elected to Congress in 1922, has often been able to avoid consideration of legislation he considers undesirable.

The late Sen. Everett M. Dirksen, R-Ill., 1951-69, himself a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, credited Celler with blocking two Senate-passed efforts to make the position of FBI director a Presidential appointment subject to Senate confirmation. The job was filled by appointment of the Attorney General originally and remained that way until the Safe Streets Act of 1968 finally gave it Presidential-appointment stature.

Dirksen said inclusion of the FBI director provision in the Safe Streets Act was responsible for getting that issue past Celler. Support for the Act was so overwhelming, Dirksen suggested, that Celler was unable to block it.

Celler's office told the National Journal, however, that the chairman had not opposed Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation for the FBI job. The earlier bills contained restrictive qualifications for the position that would have limited the list of eligible candidates more narrowly than Celler thought desirable, his office said. While Celler had some reservations about the Safe Streets Act and tried to send the bill to conference, the FBI appointment provision was not his major objection, his office said.

Celler has announced his intention to use his position to block a controversial bill in the department's crime package: an amendment to the 1966 Bail Reform Act that would permit pretrial jailing of persons accused of certain crimes if the judge determines after a hearing that release would endanger the public. (For details on crime package, see p. 109.) Celler told the National Journal on Jan. 14, "As far as I'm concerned, we'll never have a vote on preventive detention."

Flanking move-The Administration showed during the past session, however, that House Judiciary can be sidestepped. A voting rights extension bill submitted during the waning days of the Johnson Administration won approval