Last one to leave, turn out the lights

Civil Rights Division Head Resigning at Justice Dept.
By PHILIP SHENON
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — The head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division announced Thursday that he was resigning, the latest in a long string of departures from the department in the midst of a furor over the leadership of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The department said that the resignation of the official, Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim, had nothing to do with the recent controversies over Mr. Gonzales’s performance, and that Mr. Kim had been planning his departure for months.

His departure was announced on the same day that department officials confirmed that a senior official who preceded Mr. Kim in running the civil rights division, Bradley J. Schlozman, had also resigned.

In Senate testimony two months ago, Mr. Schlozman, who was interim director of the division in 1993, acknowledged that he had actively recruited conservative Republican applicants to work in the division and that he had rewritten the performance evaluations of career lawyers who were not considered loyal to the Bush administration.

Mr. Kim, who has worked in the Justice Department for most of his career, has led the civil rights division since November 2005. Although Congressional Democrats and civil rights groups have accused the division of abandoning its commitment to protection of minority rights under President Bush, Mr. Kim was not personally singled out for criticism.

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