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Report Examines Civil Rights During Bush Years

WASHINGTON — When the Bush administration ran the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, career lawyers wanted to look into accusations that officials in one state had illegally intimidated blacks during a voter-fraud investigation.

But division supervisors refused to “approve further contact with state authorities on this matter,” according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office auditing the activities of the division from 2001 to 2007.

Congress is set to release that report, which did not identify the state in question, on Thursday as the House of Representatives takes up its first oversight hearing of the Civil Rights Division under the Obama administration.
Read entire article at NYT