Dan Froomkin, who writes the White House briefing at Washington Post.com, doesn't think the illegal actions cited in the DOJ report were originated at the DOJ.  After all, Monica Goodling was the White House liaison:

The big fish keep swimming away.

The latest investigation into the overt politicization of the Department of Justice has meticulously documented how a handful of young political appointees blatantly violated federal laws and Justice Department policies by hiring career employees based on the extent of their devotion to Republican dogma.

But the report doesn't address who is responsible for creating the culture of corruption in which these aides thrived.

Who asked them to behave this way? Or, barring an explicit request, how did they come to conclude that this was what their superiors expected of them? Who twisted the Justice Department, designed to operate with a large degree of independence, into a political adjunct of the White House?

And is it really just a coincidence that Monica Goodling, the central culprit of this latest report, held the title of White House liaison?

A June report by the same two Justice Department offices that produced yesterday's findings concluded that over a five year period, aides stocked a prestigious hiring program with young conservatives, intending to reshape the department's ranks. Two more internal reports are in the works, one about political interference with the Civil Rights Division and the other about the role of politics in the administration's controversial firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

Whether the eager, young politicos who carried out these policies are held accountable is one question. But who was pulling their strings is another.

It's unlikely that former absentee landlord Alberto Gonzales was a key player here. Not only did some of these practices pre-date him, but his primary task, which he bungled, appears to have been to conceal the fact that he wasn't the one calling the shots.

Indeed, it's hard to reach any conclusion other than that White House political operatives masterminded a plan to defile the Justice Department's mission in the short run and to seed its ranks with people who will be in a position to continue the corruption for a long time to come.