Former CAP official says he didn't help Alito

Terry Eastland, a former Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) employee and former Justice Department official, said today that he did not help Samuel Alito '72 land a job with the department in 1985.

Individuals familiar with CAP previously suggested to The Daily Princetonian that the Supreme Court nominee may have touted his membership on his 1985 job application to Ronald Reagan's Justice Department to take advantage of connection, possibly to Eastland.

But Eastland, who was the editor of CAP's highly controversial magazine, Prospect, before going on to serve in the Justice Department from 1983 to 1988, said that he "played no part in the [hiring] decision."

Writing in The Weekly Standard, a prominent national conservative magazine of which he is currently publisher, Eastland added: "I didn't know Alito had applied for the job, and ... I didn't know that Alito had gone to Princeton, much less had any association with CAP."

Alito's membership in the group was the subject of intense questioning during confirmation hearings this week. He said he has no recollection of CAP and likely put it on the 1985 job application — the only record of his participation in the group — to establish his conservative credentials for the Reagan administration.

"You have to look at the question that I was responding to and the form that I was filling out," Alito told the judiciary committee. "I was applying for a position in the Reagan administration."

Former CAP board member Andrew Napolitano '72, now a Fox News analyst, said in an interview this week that "by telling [then-Attorney General] Ed Meese he was in CAP, Sam Alito was telling the Justice Department he was a true-blue conservative."

Napolitano noted that Eastland served under Meese, but conceded that any motive Alito may have had to take advantage of the connection was Napolitano's personal "speculation."

One of Alito's former roommates also suggested that Alito may have been trying to take advantage of a connection, noting that the mention of CAP seems out of place on a resume that discussed Alito's involvement with more prominent organizations, such as the Federalist Society, a group of conservative lawyers, and the National Review and the American Spectator, two national conservative publications.

"I'm sure Sam had something in mind. He wouldn't have put that in his job application if he didn't have a connection," said Mark Dwyer '72, who was Alito's roommate at Yale Law School.

Dwyer has also said that he was surprised to learn of Alito's association with the group, which has been described by critics as a far-right organization opposed to coeducation and affirmative action.

It remains unclear whether there were any CAP officials besides Eastland serving at the Justice Department in 1985 when Alito applied for a job there, and whether any officials involved in the decision to hire Alito were familiar with the group.

Writing earlier in The Weekly Standard, Eastland recalled that "Alito's reputation [at the Justice Department] then was that of a bright, hardworking lawyer of even temper and reserve."

"He came into the department as a career employee, but his exemplary work impressed his superiors, who recommended him for his presidential appointments as U.S. Attorney and to the Third Circuit," Eastland added.

Alito served from 1987 to 1989 as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. In 1990, President George H. Bush nominated him to the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a position Alito held until his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Bush in October.