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GSA. Be sure to read The Washington Post's front-page story about another politicization-of-executive-agencies scandal, this one involving a deputy of Karl Rove's as well as the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), Lurita Doan.
Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.Doan's comments at the event may have violated federal law pertaining to executive branch employees' use of their positions for political purposes. Here's the kind of thing that got discussed during the conference:
After Jennings and Doan spoke during the videoconference, one regional GSA administrator offered the suggestion that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could be excluded from the opening of an environmentally efficient federal courthouse in San Francisco, which Pelosi represents, according to Waxman's letter. GSA manages the nation's federal courthouses.Beyond the teleconference incident, as the Post reports, Henry Waxman's investigators are looking into several other issues involving GSA chief Doan that are more along the lines of straightforward cronyism and corruption. The GSA is generally an undercovered agency -- being tasked with procurement and contracting, it's an office that naturally provides very rich opportunities for corruption. Just ask the GSA's former chief of staff, David Safavian, currently facing an 18-month prison sentence for his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
--Sam Rosenfeld
