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Minnesota US Attorney Rachel Paulose's stormy tenure, of a little more than two years, ended abruptly on Monday with her announcement that she will take up a new assignment in January as a legal policy adviser to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his staff. This job will entail her return to Washington.
When she accepted her interim appointment in March 2006, the youngest person to take over the top federal law enforcer's job in Minnesota, no one could have foreseen such an end for the 34-year-old Paulose who led the prosecution of federal criminal and civil matters. Prior to this Paulose was working for the Justice Department in Washington.
The charges against Indian-American Paulose are that for about a year after her appointment in February 2006 she left highly classified reports on the war on terror lying around the office, despite warnings from then First Assistant US attorney John Marti, who finally reported the matter.
An incensed Paulose is reported to have threatened to make Marti lose his job.
But soon it was evident that not all was well in her office. In April, three top supervisors quit their management roles in her office and went back to prosecuting cases, leading to a visit from a high-ranking justice official even as US Congress was probing whether eight former US attorneys were fired and replaced by loyalists of President Bush, in an example of cronyism. Paulose was unfortunately caught in the midst of this, raising questions whether she had enough experience for the job.
Recently, her troubles flared up once again over charges that she had passed racially disparaging comments about an employee, and in blast from the past was also accused of mishandling classified documents that should have been kept locked up.
Her aggressive style apparently did not help things, and the last straw was her supervisors taking up lower positions in protest.
Her mother Lucy Paulose was quoted as saying in India Abroad: "This is a combination of a lot of things, including, racism. Rachel's age, gender, race, Christian faith, conservative value system, and the criminal society she is after, are all factors working against her. We are also being told that someone had hired a PR firm to work against Rachel and bring her down from her position," said Lucy Paulose, who runs an electronics firm Home Electronic Specialists.
"I don't think walking away means failure. Even if it is, my daughter's well-being is always my priority. At the same time, we respect her choices," she said.
Rachel's father Joseph Paulose is an administrator with the Hopkins school systems in Eagan, Minnesota.
Donna M Hughes, a professor and the Carlson Endowed Chair at the University of Rhode Island, and a few other activists wrote to the US attorney general asserting that the attacks on Paulose escalated after she began prosecuting perpetrators of human trafficking vigorously.
'We are suspicious of what we suspect may be a classic Washington, DC, campaign to destroy and end her tenure,' they had written.
Many in the ustice department dislike the prosecution of human trafficking, Donna Hughes pointed out. She had faced serious resistance from within the department for taking an office that had brought in no trafficking cases.
'It is now the leading US attorney's office in prosecuting sex traffickers,' Hughes wrote.
Hughes also pointed out the attack on Paulose's faith. 'We note in particular the repeated references in the leaked stories to Ms Paulose's religious faith, and note our familiarity with efforts to demean anti-trafficking activism as a 'Christian right' initiative.'
Many of the writers of the letter are secular people, she noted. 'We note our implacable determination to ensure that no department official will be made a sacrificial lamb for their religious faith or lack thereof, nor will Ms Paulose for her commitment to the vigorous enforcement of the country's anti-trafficking laws,' Hughes added.
Until Paulose became US attorney in March 2006, there had been little evidence of prosecuting human traffickers in Minnesota, the Star Tribune wrote.
'We had zero cases at the time that I walked in the door. One of the things that I did when I walked in was to implement the national priority of human trafficking in this district,' Paulose told the paper.
'Since the matter is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment at this time. I am confident the truth will be brought to light. I am focused on doing the work of the people, which is what I was appointed to do,' Paulose sent a response to India Abroad through her spokesperson David Anderson.
Anderson also pointed out that the overall prosecution record of the Minneapolis office was strong. 'Our office is on track and the job is getting done under Ms Paulose,' he told the New York Times.
A NY Times report said Paulose's supporters in her office say that her aggressive nature may have been misread by her staff as being abrasive. Though she was appointed because of her ties to the Republican Party, she did not have extensive ties to it and she was never accused of prosecuting for political reasons.