William Barr: A lifetime against decency and fairness

Lloyd Green, Guardian - As a Columbia undergraduate, Barr stood fast against the anti-war protesters who sought to bring the university to its knees...At the time, radical leftwing activists such as Berkeley’s Mario Savio argued that people of conscience must throw themselves against the machinery of the state. Barr, in contrast, saw himself as holding the line against anarchy and disorder. When protesters attempted to storm the university library, Barr and a group of counter-protesters blocked them. The standoff, according to the New York Times, was resolved by a massive fistfight. The counter-protestors won.

.... Barr briefly served in the CIA as an analyst and then in the agency’s legislative counsel’s office, where he met George HW Bush, then helming the agency. When Bush was later elected president, in 1988.

... During the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict, Barr argued that “our system is fair and does not treat people differently”. He conceded that “our national criminal-justice system is a diverse [and] broad one”, with cases of individual bias, but that “taken in its totality, the system seems to operate fairly”. He blamed the riots mainly on opportunistic gang violence.

After two days of rioting, Bush and Barr invoked the Insurrection Act at the request of California’s Republican governor, Pete Wilson. The statute is a rarely-used provision that permits the president to use federal military forces for domestic law enforcement, which is normally illegal. Together with the national guard, the US army and marines deployed to LA and helped restored order.