H. Marshall Jarrett
Quick Facts
Biography
H. Marshall Jarrett (born 1945) was appointed the Chief Counsel and Director of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1998 and subsequently rose to Director for the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA), from which he retired in 2014.
Quoting the DOJ announcement of Jarrett's appointment as Chief Counsel,
Jarrett, a resident of Falls Church, Virginia, has served in a wide variety of positions within the Department of Justice. In 1975 he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of West Virginia as a trial attorney, where he rose to the positions of Chief of the Criminal Division and later First Assistant U.S. Attorney.
After serving briefly as the Deputy Director of the Enforcement Division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1980 Jarrett joined the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section as a trial attorney. He was later named Assistant Chief for Operations, and Deputy Chief of the Section. During his tenure there, Jarrett prosecuted a variety of defendants, including CIA agents for stealing government funds, the chairman Kentucky's Democratic Party for an insurance mail fraud and tax scheme, and a Mississippi sheriff for drug trafficking.
In 1988, Jarrett was named by then-U.S. Attorney Jay B. Stephens as Chief of the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, the largest United States Attorney's office in the nation. Mr. Jarrett served with distinction in that position, managing such high profile cases as prosecutions of drug kingpin Rayful Edmonds III, Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, twelve corrupt District of Columbia police officers who became known as the "Dirty Dozen," and Mayor Marion Barry. In July 1997, Jarrett became an Associate Deputy Attorney General within the Department of Justice, where he has assisted the senior leadership in formulating policy and managing the Department.
Jarrett sought to investigate DOJ approval for the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program in 2006, but requisite security clearances were denied.On February 22, 2008, Jarrett announced an investigation of DOJ legal memoranda by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Steven G. Bradbury, and others justifying waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques.
On February 19, 2010, Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis issued a memorandum for the Attorney General in which he refused both to adopt the OPR's findings of misconduct and to authorize the OPR to recommend to state bar authorities disciplinary actions against Yoo and Bybee.
Jarrett retired his directorship at EOUSA on 31 March 2014.