A new report [1] documents the troubling -- and improper -- behavior of top officials in the U.S. Department of Justice:

Justice Department officials improperly used political and ideological factors to screen applicants for the agency's prestigious honors and summer intern programs, sometimes rejecting otherwise qualified candidates because of their ties to Democrats, internal auditors said in a report issued this morning.

The long awaited review faulted Bush administration officials for violating Justice Department policy and civil service rules beginning in 2002, when they tried to fill career posts with rookie lawyers whose political affiliations mirrored their own.

Investigators for the Justice Department's Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, which oversees legal ethics, reviewed thousands of e-mail messages and conducted interviews with current and former officials, concluding that the hiring efforts "undermined confidence in the integrity of the department's hiring processes."

The report traced the problems back six years, to when Justice officials urged political appointees in the department's many divisions to take a more active role in hiring for the summer intern and honors programs. The activity flourished in 2002, dying down for a few years, before reviving in 2006, according to the investigative report.

Two members of the screening committee in 2006, Esther Slater McDonald, an adviser to the associate attorney general, and Michael J. Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, considered political and ideological factors when rejecting candidates "and thereby committed misconduct," the investigators said.