Democrats Grill Appeals Court Nominee

Judge Alex Kozinski, the Reagan Administration’s controversial nominee to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, underwent more intensive questioning Friday from Democrats who challenged his candor, temperament and treatment of former subordinates.

The 35-year old Kozinski, now chief judge of the U.S. Claims Court, testified for nearly three hours during a rare rehearing on his nomination by the Senate Judiciary Committee--a hearing marked by acrimonious exchanges between his Democratic critics and his Republican supporters.

At the conclusion of the daylong hearing, committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) denounced the criticism of Kozinski as the “puniest, most nit-picking charges I’ve ever heard.”

But Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who is leading the assault on the nomination, promised to fight Kozinski’s confirmation when it reaches the Senate floor early next week.

“Intellectual ability and academic training are important, but judicial temperament is an equally important consideration,” said Levin. “And this is where Judge Kozinski comes up unacceptably short.”

The unusual hearing was scheduled at the request of Levin and Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) just before the nomination was set for a Senate vote. The committee already had approved the nomination without objection in September, despite doubts voiced by Democrats.

Focus of Testimony

Most of the testimony Friday focused on Kozinski’s 14-month tenure as special counsel to the Merit Systems Protection Board in 1981-82. Two former subordinates accused Kozinski of being abusive and unfair to employees and of failing in his duty to protect “whistle-blowers,” government workers who accuse their supervisors of wrongdoing or mismanagement. Three other former co-workers said he was demanding but fair.

Levin accused Kozinski of having “misled” the committee previously about the way he handled certain cases while special counsel and in describing his relationship with co-workers as “very fine.”

Both Levin and Metzembaum questioned the nominee sharply about whether he had distributed copies of a broadcast editorial by a Boston commentator that praised Kozinski and accused the Government Accountability Project, a group opposing Kozinski, of being sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, “a revolutionary group hostile to the U.S. and with ties to terrorist groups such as the PLO.”

Metzembaum said that distributing such material would come “close to Red-baiting.”

Denies Endorsement

Kozinski acknowledged that he had sent “one, perhaps two,” copies of the editorial, along with other material about his pending nomination, to an attorney who was advising him and possibly to one other person. He said he had not learned until recently that the Accountability Project no longer was allied with the institute. And he said that he was “not endorsing” the allegations in the editorial.

In earlier testimony, John F. Hollingsworth, a former administrator in the Office of Special Counsel of the Merit Systems Protection Board, accused Kozinski of humiliating him by forcing him to personally repair and move Kozinski’s furniture. Hollingsworth, noting that he had kept a photograph of himself repairing the furniture, said he had followed orders “to avoid Mr. Kozinski’s wrath.”

Asked about such occurrences, Kozinski told the committee that he himself had carried boxes, moved furniture, repaired machinery and done typing to make the office function smoothly. “It was not demeaning to me to crawl under a desk if necessary to get an office to operate,” he said. Mary Eastwood, an attorney who served as acting special counsel before Kozinski took over, said that the “unnecessarily harsh and cruel” way he treated subordinates showed that he lacked the right temperament for a judge.

On this point, Levin displayed a copy of a legal brief showing Kozinski’s heavy editing of a subordinate’s work--in several colors of ink--along with deprecating remarks about the writing. “We’re talking about temperament,” Levin said as he waved the document in the air. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) expressed angry dismay with the slow pace of the proceedings. “We’ve posed question after question to Judge Kozinski and he has answered them fairly and honestly,” Hatch said. “At some point we have to move ahead with this nomination.”