-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 7, 2007 3:27:35 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Another Bush Federal Agency Chief Under Investigation
Probe Targets GSA Chief
April 05, 2007 3:38 PM
Justin Rood
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/probe_targets_g.html
Another federal investigation is targeting a Bush administration
official, this time for possibly using government resources for
partisan political purposes.
The Office of Special Counsel confirmed to ABC News it has launched
an investigation into General Services Administration chief Lurita
Doan, probing concerns she may have violated a ban against
conducting partisan political activity at government expense by
participating in a meeting featuring a presentation by a White
House political aide on GOP election strategy.
Doan's agency spends over $56 billion a year on paper clips, office
space, car fleets and other necessities for federal agencies.
In January, Doan attended a meeting at which senior White House
political aide W. Scott Jennings briefed Doan, a White House
appointee, and other officials at a GSA facility on Republican
plans to win seats in Congress.
After the presentation, according to some witnesses contacted by
congressional investigators, Doan encouraged other attendees to
find ways GSA could help "our candidates" in the 2008 election.
Doan has told Congress she doesn't recall making the statement, and
other witnesses interviewed by congressional investigators are said
to have backed her up.
Doan has also faced scrutiny from Congress and her agency's own
internal watchdog on unrelated matters, including concerns over a
GSA service order involving a company connected to one of Doan's
friends.
But Doan may not have been the only top official to host a White
House political official at her agency. The White House political
office has been giving presentations similar to the one at GSA
since at least 2002, briefing officials throughout the government
on Republican campaign information, according to a recent book by
two Los Angeles Times reporters.
"[White House political adviser Karl] Rove and [former Bush
campaign chief and one-time Republican National Committee head Ken]
Mehlman ventured to nearly every cabinet agency to share key
polling data" leading up to the 2002 midterm elections, wrote Tom
Hamburger and Peter Wallsten in their book, "One Party Country,"
"and to deliver a reminder of White House priorities, including the
need for the president's allies to win in the next election."
While previous administrations had sent officials to cabinet
agencies, the duo wrote, "Such intense regular communication from
the political office had never occurred before."
Some believe those meetings are cause for further investigation by
Congress and the Office of Special Counsel. "They should be looking
at whether this particular meeting is part of a larger pattern and
practice of violating the Hatch Act," said Melanie Sloan, director
of the left-leaning government watchdog group Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The Hatch Act
prohibits government resources – including employees' time or space
in a government building – from being used for partisan politics.
Congressional Democrats are on the Doan case. House Oversight and
Government Reform Commmittee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., last
week grilled the GSA chief and asked the White House for
information on whether the January GSA presentation has been given
at other government agencies.
On Wednesday, his office asked the Republican National Committee to
turn over any e-mails in its possession relating to such briefings.
In a statement e-mailed to ABC News, a GSA spokeswoman said that
Doan was "fully complying" with the OSC probe, which was first
noted by the web site GovExec.com, and that the organization could
not comment further on an open investigation. An OSC official
confirmed that the probe was begun before Waxman's hearing last week.
See what's free at AOL.com.
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