New Deputy Attorney General Sworn In

It was standing room only in the Justice Department’s Great Hall when Eric Holder Jr. was sworn in Friday as deputy attorney general, becoming the highest-ranking black law enforcement official in the nation’s history.

Sticklers might quibble that he actually has been on the job since July 18, a day after the Senate unanimously approved his nomination, but this was the day for pomp, hundreds of guests, speeches and a party in Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s office.

Holder, 46, a Ronald Reagan-appointed District of Columbia Superior Court judge for five years before President Clinton named him U.S. attorney for the district in 1993, urged an end to divisiveness.

“The source of many of the tragedies that have marred the American experience has been the way in which we have allowed ourselves to be divided, by political party, by race, by class, even by geography,” Holder told the crowd of Democrats and Republicans.

“As a nation, we have too frequently thought of our fellow Americans as them and not us,” he said. “What happens in southeast Washington, in Harlem, in South Central Los Angeles or in the southern hills of West Virginia should matter deeply to all of us, if for no other reason than that it is Americans who are suffering.”

Reno lauded Holder’s integrity, recalling that, when he became U.S. attorney, he was plunged into “a sensitive and important prosecution.” The case, which she didn’t name, concerned then-House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), who eventually pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges.

“People were afraid that Eric Holder might back down,” she said. “People didn’t know Eric Holder, didn’t know that he was committed to doing the right thing, regardless of the consequences, and he was going to do it the right way.”

Holder worked 12 years for the Justice Department’s Public Integrity section--prosecuting state officials, judges, FBI agents and a federal prosecutor--before becoming a judge in 1988.

Harkening back to those days, Reno said, “Eric Holder has come home, come home to the Department of Justice.”

She quoted his Public Integrity colleagues as saying: “ ‘He is such an honest person. He is such an effective lawyer. He is such a dedicated public servant.’ ”

“When so many people can say so many nice things about you, not to your face, you know it’s pretty darn good,” she said to laughter.

Holder succeeds Jamie Gorelick, who resigned in the spring.