The White House announced on Friday the nomination of Michael E. Horowitz for the Department of Justice’s Inspector General post.

Horowitz is currently a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, where he focuses on white collar defense, international investigations and regulatory compliance.

Horowitz comes with more than a decade of experience as a top DOJ official and federal prosecutor. He worked from 1999 to 2002 as Deputy Assistant Attorney General and then as chief of staff for the DOJ’s Criminal Division. Before that, Horowitz served for eight years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, overseeing the Public Corruption Unit from 1997 to 1999.

He also served as a commissioner for the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 2003 to 2009, and is a board member of the Ethics Resource Center, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law.

He would replace the acting Inspector General Cynthia A. Schedar, who has held the position since January. Before her, Glenn A. Fine held the office for 10 years as President Bill Clinton’s appointee.

A member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s public affairs team will soon join the Justice Department’s press office.

Adora Andy, who has been at EPA’s public affairs office since 2008, will leave the agency to start at the Justice Department on Aug. 22. She was President Barack Obama’s appointee for deputy associate administrator for Office of External Affairs and Environmental Education and has worked as the EPA’s press secretary during the BP oil spill last year.

Adora Andy

Before the EPA, Andy worked on Obama’s presidential campaign as regional press secretary in Florida during the general election season and as a spokeswoman for six states.

She has also worked as a television news producer and reporter in Columbia, Mo., press secretary for former Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee in his 2005 bid for a Senate seat, and public information officer for the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office in Georgia.

Andy’s appointment was first reported by Mike Allen in his Playbook newsletter.

The Justice Department Office of Public Affairs did not respond to a request for information about Andy’s new duties.

President Barack Obama announced his intention Thursday to nominate Assistant U.S. Attorney Rudolph Contreras and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronnie Abrams for two district court seats.

Contreras, who has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney since 1994, would serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, taking the seat now held by Judge Ricardo Urbina. He has served as chief of the Civil Division at the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C., and before that, held the same position in the District of Delaware from 2003 to 2006.

Before joining the DOJ, Contreras spent three years as an associate at the law firm Jones Day.

His nomination was announced with Abrams’ nomination for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Abrams works now as special counsel for pro bono work at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. From 1998 to 2008, she served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where she was acting chief of the General Crimes Unit from 2004 to 2005 and chief of the unit from 2005 to 2007. She also led the office’s Criminal Division from 2007 to 2008.

Several leadership changes are coming to the Justice Department’s National Security Division, with FBI chief of staff John Carlin and the director of intelligence programs Anita Singh joining the division just as chief of staff Donald Vieira departs.

Vieira, who has held the chief of staff position since March 2009, will leave the department to join the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as a partner.

Before joining the division, he served as deputy chief counsel and staff director of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He has also been a federal prosecutor in the DOJ’s Counterespionage Section.

But two new additions will beef up the division’s leadership team.

Singh will join the National Security Division’s leadership as deputy chief of staff and counsel.

She comes from the DOJ’s Criminal Division, where she works on detail with the White House’s National Security Staff. She has also served as a counsel in the division’s front office and as a trial attorney in the honors program.

Also joining the division, Carlin currently works as chief of staff and senior counsel to FBI Director Robert Mueller, but he was recently selected to join the National Security Division as principle deputy assistant attorney and chief of staff.

Before the FBI, Carlin joined the DOJ through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and worked as a trial attorney in the Tax Division, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and the national coordinator of the Justice Department’s Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property program.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday postponed voting on the nomination of former Kansas Attorney General Steve Six, a Democrat, to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals because both of his state’s senators say they will not support him.

The committee had scheduled a vote on Six’s nomination Thursday, but Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced that panel would not vote because Republican Sens. Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran opposed the nominee.

“After thoroughly reviewing Mr. Six’s record and his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I will not support his nomination to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals,” Roberts said in a statement June 16. “I have urged my colleagues on the committee to vote against his nomination.”

Roberts and Morgan sent a letter to Leahy Monday asking the committee not to take up the nomination, and declined to state their reason.

But in a statement sent to Main Justice, Roberts suggested his opposition centers around Six’s political beliefs about the health care reform law and abortion.

“Based on the nominee’s own testimony and responses to questions, I found significant difficulty in recommending the nominee to this lifelong appointment to the appellate court position,” Roberts said in the statement.

Six, who was appointed the state’s Attorney General from 2008 to 2011 by then-Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, has said that he could find no constitutional defects in the health care reform bill signed by President Barack Obama, and he declined to file a lawsuit challenging the law while in office.

Roberts disagreed with Six’s assessment, saying, “with all due respect, the average person can identify the constitutional defects of Obamacare.”

The senator also said he was troubled by Six’s evasive responses before the Senate Judiciary Committee about an investigation into a Planned Parenthood clinic. That investigation was started by Six’s predecessor, former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline.

Obama first nominated Six in March to fill a vacancy created by Federal Appeals Court Judge Deanell Reece Tacha.

Documents obtained by the Associated Press show that Roberts initially suggested to the Judiciary Committee that he approved of Six’s nomination, and Moran made no judgment at the time.

In a reply letter to the senators, Leahy said he was surprised to learn of their opposition and asked how they would like the committee to proceed, according to the AP. He also said it was his understanding that the senators had been consulted by the White House before the nomniation, and that Six enjoyed substantial bipartisan support.

“This type of reversal of position by a home state senator on a nomination has rarely occurred,” Leahy wrote to Roberts. “As I have expressed to Sen. [Charles] Grassley, the committee’s ranking member, in my view no new material information emerged during the course of our review of the nomination, his testimony at his confirmation hearing, or in his answers to multiple rounds of written follow up questions, and certainly none that was disqualifying.”

UPDATED: To add statements from Sen. Pat Roberts

FBI Director Robert Mueller appointed Aaron M. Zebley as his new chief of staff  Thursday to fill the gap left as the current chief leaves to join the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Zebley will spearhead priority projects, and manage the day-to-day operations of the director’s office.

Aaron M. Zebley is appointed FBI Director Robert Mueller's new chief of staff.

Most recently, Zebley served as Mueller’s deputy chief of staff, and before that, his special counsel. He has also worked as a FBI special agent and an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia from 2005 to 2010.

He will replace current chief of staff John P. Carlin, who was selected to serve as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Carlin first joined the department in 1999 through the Attorney General’s Program before transferring to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia in 2001. He became Assistant U.S. Attorney for the office and also served in the department’s Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property program.

“John’s talents and judgment will be missed here at the bureau, but I look forward to continuing to work with him in his new position,” Mueller said in an email to employees Thursday. “He will continue to work on the national security and law enforcement issues to which he has contributed greatly here at the FBI.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted 14-to-4 to approve a bill that would strengthen public corruption laws and help close what critics call a gap in prosecutorial power left by the Supreme Court in a ruling last year.

Authored by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee’s chairman, and John Cornyn (R-Texas), the “Public Corruption Prosecution Improvements Act” would raise maximum penalties, clarify what official actions signal corruption and make clear that officials cannot accept things of value given to them because of their position. It would also extend the statute of limitations from five to six years for bribery, honest services fraud and extortion of a public official.

“This kind of corruption erodes the trust the American people have in those given the privilege of public service,” Leahy said in a statement. “Prosecutors and law enforcement need meaningful tools to help stamp out corruption.”

Leahy and Cornyn have introduced similar legislation on public corruption during the last three Congresses.

But this time, Leahy also pushed for a provision allowing prosecutors to target undisclosed “self-dealing” by public officials – or secret acts that serve an official’s financial self-interest – in a direct response to the Supreme Court ruling in Skilling v. United States, which narrowed the scope of honest services fraud to bribery and kickbacks schemes.

Leahy authored another bill seeking to similarly broaden the honest services fraud statute after the ruling last year. That bill never left committee, but portions of it were included in the measure endorsed Thursday, said Democratic committee spokeswoman Erica Chabot in an email.

Prosecutors historically used the honest services fraud statute as a broad tool in public corruption cases because it didn’t depend on a direct quid pro quo like in bribery or kickback cases. That is, until the court found it unconstitutionally vague.

Since then, the DOJ has urged legislators to fill the hole left by Skilling and several other rulings, and in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary Patrice Brown said the Justice Department would back similar legislation coming through the House.

The Senate version, approved Thursday, originated as part of a bicameral agreement between the senators and Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.).

“Public corruption is not a Republican or Democrat problem. It is a problem across this country,” Cornyn said in a statement. “Our citizens deserve to be governed by the rule of law, not the rule of men. I’ve worked with Senator Leahy on several bipartisan bills and this bill is another great example of our combined effort to help clean up government and promote transparency.”

The Pentagon and the CIA will explain by Sept. 26 their legal reasoning  for not releasing photographs and videotapes of the May 1 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

A schedule submitted to Judge James E. Boasberg of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia calls for the government to file its key motion by Sept. 26 against a suit by Judicial Watch, Josh Gerstein reported Thursday on Politico. Judicial Watch is seeking images from the raid under the Freedom of Information Act.

Judicial Watch’s president, Thomas Fitton, said he doubts his group will see any of the bin Laden materials without a court order, Gerstein reported. “We won’t find that out until Sept. 26, but practically speaking the government has let us know that they’re going to withhold everything,” Fitton said. “I think we will get what we are requesting—at least eventually.”

DOJ spokesman Charles Miller said the filing doesn’t indicate that the government will release any imagery of the bin Laden operation. “All it means is that we will file a brief on Sept. 26 articulating our position,” he said, according to Gerstein.

Soon after the raid, President Barack Obama said he didn’t want to release pictures from the raid for fear they would be inflammatory.

More than a decade ago, an agent with the Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal investigation division was working closely with an FBI agent on a hazardous-waste case in Louisiana — too closely, if the official version of events is to be believed.

The EPA agent, Keith Phillips of Kent, Tex., and the female FBI agent, identified only as Agent A, were in pursuit of Hubert Vidrine Jr., a manager at a small refinery plant in western Louisiana, and several others. Vidrine and others were indicted but eventually won dismissal of the charges.

Vidrine subsequently filed a malicious-prosecution suit against the EPA in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. In the course of that suit, Phillips was deposed and was asked, under oath, about his relationship with Agent A.  “We’re close friends,” he replied.

Does that fully describe the nature of your relationship, he was asked.

“Yes, it does,” he replied.

Did you have an affair, he was asked.

“No,” Phillips replied.

Yes, the DOJ says in a statement noting that Phillips, 61, has been charged with lying under oath and obstruction of justice.

“The indictment alleges that it was material to the civil lawsuit to determine any potential motives of the criminal investigators in investigating and prosecuting the charges against Vidrine, and that Phillips committed perjury when he testified falsely about the affair and obstructed justice when he provided this false testimony,” the DOJ says.  “The indictment further alleges that he then contacted the FBI Special Agent to influence her not to disclose the existence of the affair.”

If convicted, Phillips faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 on the obstruction of justice count and five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 on the perjury count.

Let us stipulate at the outset that there have been some proud chapters in the FBI’s long history. Alas, the way it used to teach newcomers about Islam is not one of them.

Islam “transforms a country’s culture into 7th Century Arabian ways,” the bureau was telling recruits as recently as January 2009. Included on a “Recommended Reading” slide show are “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam” and “The Truth About Muhammad,” the latter by one Robert Spencer.

Despite once being recommended reading for new agents, Spencer might have continued to  toil in obscurity as an anti-Muslim blogger,  had he not been quoted dozens of times in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, who was likewise unknown to the larger world until he allegedly slaughtered scores of people in Norway not many days ago.

Information on the teaching materials (if that’s the right term) formerly used by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Asian Law Caucus, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last year. Spencer Ackerman first reported on the slide show at Wired’s Danger Room, and Ryan J. Reilly has a more recent report on Talking Points Memo.

Mike German of the ACLU, a former FBI agent, told TPM that educating agents with such material can only lead to abuse. “Certainly I was concerned with the approach the FBI was taking post-9/11, which is why I’m no longer with the FBI,” German told TPM. “I am shocked to see that this type of training material was produced in 2009.”

One of the recommended titles was “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam.” For what it’s worth, there are a lot of “Complete Idiot” books in circulation, containing straightforward information on subjects as diverse as Catholicism and electrical wiring. But some of the other material seems way out of bounds.

The FBI told Ackerman that the slide show presentation “was a rudimentary version used for a limited time that has since been replaced,” and that Spencer’s book was no longer on the recommended reading list. (All right. The reputations of authors rise and fall.)

German sounded almost charitable about the bureau. “The FBI is made up of human beings, and human beings make mistakes, but one would have thought by 2009 they would have understood this issue a little more clearly and realized how offensive that material would be read,” he said.

“Clearly there needs to be some greater oversight, because it is dangerous to put disinformation in the hands of law enforcement officers who are later going to be responsible for implementing FBI programs and policies. It could seriously have a detrimental effect if agents are trained in a biased manner.”

Wait, now. Let’s not jump to conclusions.