Apparently there's more to Scott Bloch's resignation as head of U.S. Special Counsel that meets the eye. According to the National Journal's Congress Daily, Bloch was fired today in a meeting with White House officials.

From Congress Daily:

Scott Bloch, the embattled head of the U.S. Special Counsel, was fired today in a meeting with White House officials, according to several sources. Bloch is under federal investigation for possible obstruction of justice for destroying computer files sought by investigators in prior probe into whether he retaliated illegally against whistleblowers in his office. On Monday Bloch announced plans to resign on Jan. 5. OSC employees said Federal Protective Service employees barred Bloch from his office today. The agency has an all-hands meeting at 4 p.m.

Scott Bloch, a TPMmuckraker favorite who in July had said publicly that he had no plans to resign as U.S. special counsel, will in January do exactly that, reports the Associated Press.

It adds:

In 2004, Bloch was put in charge of the [Office of Special Counsel], whose mission is to protect the rights of federal workers and ensure that government whistle-blowers are not subjected to reprisals. But almost from the start, Bloch himself was a subject of investigations, including for closing hundreds of cases allegedly without investigating them and for allegedly retaliating against employees.

Bloch did investigate General Service Chief (and another TPMmuckraker fave) Lurita Doan, a probe which led to a wider invesitgation into whether administration employees were illegally working to support Republican political candidates.

But an investigation was launched by the Office of Personnel Management into Bloch's own conduct, after OSC staffers complained that Bloch intimidated and transferred employees who opposed his policies. Bloch was also accused of not protecting gay federal employees from discrimination. In April 2007, the FBI raided Bloch's office and home, after he had been accused of destroying evidence and lying to Congress during the probe.

Bloch told congressional investigators that in December 2006, he used $1,149 in federal money to have a tech company scrub his government laptop computer. He said it was dne to protect government and personal information.

Lurita Doan, the former administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), is a favorite of TPMmuckraker -- not just because she's sufficiently steeped in controversy, but because she makes for some great TPMtv.

Well today, Lurita decided to make us some great PDFs.

The House Oversight Report released yesterday found that the White House had enlisted government agencies -- like the GSA, led by Doan at the time -- to assist Republicans running for re-election. You might remember Doan as the agency head who had the good sense to ask Karl Rove's aide Scott Jennings, "how 'we' could help 'our candidates' in the next election" in front of a roomful of assembled officials.

Doan wrote a angry two-page response to Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, defending herself. For the world's viewing pleasure, she sent a copy of that letter to FedBlog, who wasted no time in posting it.

"Most Americans have grown familiar with your lack of candor, misleading statements, and bitter partisan machinations, and certainly, your report serves as yet another example of the same ol' same ol' from Henry Waxman," Doan begins her letter.

"You, quite shamefully, decided to ignore it," Doan continues, after laying out her version of events. "You didn't want the truth; you wanted a highly charged misinterpretation so that you could weave your idea of political gold."

Doan also criticizes the investigation of Office of Special Counsel Director Scott Bloch, who she claims "directed federal employees, on government time to pen anonymous blogs to further disparage my character and distort the facts for your direct benefit."

"Are you aware," she continues, "one of Mr. Bloch's federal bloggers penned especially negative attacks and disguised himself 'a combat veteran'. [sic] How utterly craven."

But really, our favorite part is the finale where she begs for a chance to go in front of the Committee again.

I now understand you and your ubiquitous hypocrisy. I know how your witch hunts and kangaroo courts work. So please, invite me to testify. I can't wait.

We can only hope, Lurita.

Read Doan's letter to Waxman, in all its glory, here.

The Department of Justice has been taking a lot of heat lately for the inspector general's report detailing pervasive, illegal partisanship among upper-level officials.

But former employees from the Office of Special Counsel say they've been complaining about the exact same problems for more than three years, and the White House is blocking a public report about misconduct in that office.

We often remind you that Special Counsel Scott Bloch is under investigation by the FBI. He's accused of deleting emails -- and possibly obstructing justice -- in an investigation stemming from his employees complaining about the same kind of partisan activity outlined in Monday's report from the DOJ Inspector General.

Now that group of employees who filed that complaint back in 2005 wants the White House to publish a report about their former employer.

A lawyer for the former employees, Avi Kumin, wrote a letter today to the White House Counsel, urging for a formal, public report.

Kumin rattled off several examples of parallels between DOJ and Bloch's office.

My clients' complaint reported that OSC officials hired several career employees primarily because they attended the Christian, conservative (and at the time only provisionally accredited) Ave Maria Law School. ...

My clients reported years ago that Mr. Bloch fired them because of their perceived sexual orientation or perceived support for enforcing sexual orientation protections for federal employees. ...

My clients' compliant about OSC raised significant evidence that Mr. Bloch and his staff evaluated whistleblower and Hatch Act investigations based on partisan politics.

In theory, federal employees who feel they've faced discrimination for partisan or ideological reasons can file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel. But it's hard to think that would get investigated impartially by an office itself accused of discriminating against people for political agendas.

Yesterday we learned that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote a letter to Special Counsel Scott Bloch urging the embattled chief of the independent investigative office to step down.

Bloch's had a lot of problems lately. He's under investigation by the FBI and his top deputy quit recently complaining about "political agendas" at the office that's supposed to investigate things like misconduct related to political agendas.

Today we see that Bloch promptly fired back, sending Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee, a terse letter saying he has no plans to resign his post until his term ends next year.

Read the letter here.

Special Counsel Scott Bloch is under investigation by the FBI. His own employees can't stand him. And now pressure is mounting from Capitol Hill for one of Washington's top watchdogs to step down.

House oversight committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent Bloch a letter yesterday urging him to step down from the agency charged with investigating allegations of retaliation against whistle blowers.

The mission of the agency should be the paramount consideration. It is for this reason that I have concluded that OSC would be better served with new leadership and urge you to step down as the Special Counsel. Such a move would be in the best interest of the agency and the federal employees its charged to protect.

Waxman's letter comes after Bloch's chief deputy resigned from the office citing "political agendas."

Up until now, Waxman has been uncharacteristically quiet regarding allegations of Bloch's misconduct, which includes retaliating against whistleblowers in his own office.

The committee's ranking member, Tom Davis (R-VA), called for Bloch's resignation weeks ago.

From the AP:

The second-in-command at the government's top whistle-blower office has quit in a dispute with his boss, whom he accused of putting "political agendas and personal vendettas" ahead of the agency's mission and independence.

James Byrne's resignation as deputy to U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch is effective Saturday. Bloch is under federal investigation, accused of destroying evidence potentially showing he retaliated against his own staff.

"Upon my departure, I am obligated to note that the mission, independence and very existence of the Office of Special Counsel are--and shall remain--at risk unless and until this agency is afforded a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed leader who is capable of putting OSC's mission and OSC's people ahead of political agendas and personal vendettas," Byrne, the deputy special counsel, wrote in a July 10 letter to Bloch that was obtained by The Associated Press.

"This agency, and the people whom we serve, deserve no less."

Is there anyone over at the Office of Special Counsel who is still loyal to thier boss, Scott Bloch?

Apparently bad morale reaches all the way up Bloch's inner circle.

The Special Counsel's top deputy, Jim Byrne, resigned yesterday and we heard it's due to frustrations with his boss -- and the White House's apparent refusal to take any action.

NPR heard the same thing:

Sources close to Byrne describe this as a resignation in protest over the way the office has been run under Special Counsel Scott Bloch.

Bloch, appointed to be Washington's top investigator for allegations of retaliating against whislteblowers, has struggled ever since he came under investigation for retaliating against whislteblowers himself.

That FBI raid was pretty embarrassing.

Byrne didn't mention Bloch at all in his terse farewell email to colleagues:

Colleagues,

As you may have heard, I am resigning my career Senior Executive Service position as Deputy Special Counsel effective July 19, 2008. I am grateful for the opportunities I have been afforded during my time at OSC, and I leave with a deep admiration for all of you -- the men and women who dedicate their lives to safeguarding the merit system and to protecting federal employees from prohibited personnel practices. Please let me know if there is anything that I need to tend to prior to my departure. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

All the best,

Jim

A spokesman for Bloch's office did not return a call for comment.

By our count, Bloch has been through at least three deputies since he took office in 2004.

As predicted, there's been lots of fall out from the first report by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General on the hiring practices used by the DOJ.

As the New York Times reports today:

The Office of Special Counsel, an agency that investigates political interference in the federal workplace, let the Justice Department know this week that it would be examining the issues raised in the report "to discuss what our next step should be," said James P. Mitchell, a spokesman for the office.

The special counsel has offered to work with the department "to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted," Mr. Mitchell said. The inspector general's report noted that two department officials who it said were largely responsible for the abuses in 2006, Michael Elston and Esther Slater McDonald, could not face disciplinary action because both had left the department.

But Mr. Mitchell said: "That doesn't rule out others -- those who considered political affiliation in making decisions as well as those who let them do that. This is a prohibited practice, and this is an area that we enforce."

The OSC is no stranger to trouble. It's had its own issues lately, namely that the head of the department, Scott Bloch, is under investigation by the FBI.

Today is U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch's big morale-boosting "retreat" over at a swanky hotel across the river in Alexandria, VA.

As we noted last week, there was something a bit preposterous about the day's schedule -- Bloch hosting a training session about how to obtain email evidence when he himself is under FBI investigation for deleting emails.

It looks like the Department of Justice agreed. A DOJ official that was scheduled to lead the "E-Discovery Training" seminar (Scott Bain from the Civil Division) backed out at the last minute, leaving a 90-minute hole in the "retreat" that Bloch had set up to boost morale.

"It's a case of scheduling and we're trying to reschedule it," Charles Miller, a spokesman for DOJ, told TPMmuckraker this morning.

Career officials are in open revolt over at the Office of Special Counsel.

The underlings are outraged at their boss, Scott Bloch, who is under investigation by the FBI. The one man in the Bush Administration who is supposed to investigate whistle blower complaints is himself accused of retaliating against whistle blowers.

"We're trying to deal with this by decapitation," one official told TPM. "The big question is: Why isn't the White House letting him go?"

Meanwhile, Bloch is desperately trying to improve morale.

Against the advice of career officials in the office -- some of whom have been subpoenaed in the investigation -- Bloch is convening a day-long "retreat" in Alexandria, VA, flying in officials from offices in Dallas, Oakland and Detroit, for a pep talk.

During the training session, Bloch himself will give a talk entitled: "Training on Accountability, Efficiency, OSC's Independence, and "What a Whistleblower is."

The meeting was scaled back from Bloch's original idea of a multi-day retreat out in the Shenandoah Valley.

"He brought up the idea and said, 'What does everybody think? And everybody just kind of sat there," the official said.

We'll post the agenda for next week's retreat shortly.

Late Update: One former OSC official points to the afternoon session on "E-Discovery Training" and says it's "ironic in the extreme, given the accusations of his own attempted destruction of computer files that were requested in connection with the investigation of him!"

Bloch reportedly hired Geeks on Call to erase his email files.

Late Update: Here's the agenda.

We just learned that the head of the U.S. Office of Special Council, whose office and home were raided by federal agents last month, had a habit of instructing employees to go online and post comments rebutting news stories that he perceived as negative, according to a report from CongressDaily

"That did go on," said a former employee who has been involved in the activity. "Bloch would suggest posting things in the comments section. ... There'd be a negative article about Scott's involvement on something ... and [the] comment would be something like 'This Bloch guy is doing a good job." Two former OSC employees have gone so far as to describe Bloch as thin-skinned and "obsessed" with his press coverage.

Admittedly, Bloch has gotten some bad press in recent years. The man running the office in charge of investigating whistle-blower complaints, Bloch himself came under investigation in 2005 for retaliating against whistle blowers.

Then the feds got involved, suspicious that he was obstructing justice when he had a firm called "Geeks on Call" delete a batch of office emails potentially related to the investigation.

Meanwhile, through it all, Bloch still found time to worry about what everyone is saying about him, especially in his home state.

The employee suggested at least one OSC worker posted comments on the Web sites of such publications as the Washington Post, Topeka Capital-Journal, and the Lawrence Journal World. The two Kansas-based publications have written about Bloch because he is from the state.

In another instance confirmed by CongressDaily, an OSC employee who has not served in the military identified himself as "A Combat Vet" in an online response to a July 13, 2007, article on GovernmentExecutive.com. In the article, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans faulted Bloch for his use of personal e-mail to discuss agency business.

The anonymous posting said news organizations were devoting too little coverage to OSC's enforcement of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, which bars discrimination against people based on service in the armed services.

"Where is the coverage of USERRA?" the posting asked. "OSC helped my buddy out when he couldn't get his job back, and it doesn't seem like anybody is checking into how it helps veterans. ... Who the hell cares if Bloch sent an email about congresscritters goofing off and playing pattycake. This USERRA issue is a huge deal for us who served. Does anyone give a crap?"

TPMmuckraker has tracked Bloch's travails pretty closely over the past several months. We don't have any indication his underlings were posting comments here -- but it does make us curious.

Since 2005, Special Counsel Scott Bloch, whose office is charged in part with protecting federal whistleblowers, has been under investigation for retaliating against whistleblowers in his own office and generally politicizing the OSC.

Now government watchdog POGO says they've discovered evidence that Bloch's apparent motivation for launching a very well publicized probe was to make himself invulnerable:

An extraordinary document obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) from inside the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) reveals that Special Counsel Scott Bloch created a special task force to investigate sensitive and high-profile matters and then ignored virtually every recommendation made by it. The document lends support to POGO's theory that Bloch used the task force to launch an investigation of the White House, issuing demands for documents termed by his own task force as "overly broad," to create the appearance of a conflict of interest with an ongoing investigation into allegations that Bloch himself had engaged in misconduct.

POGO has posted the document here (pdf). As they say, the document shows that Bloch worked to maximize the probe of Karl Rove and other White House aides against the recommendation of his own advisors. You might say that shows he was just being aggressive, but his task force evidently thought they were wasting their time by getting into matters the OSC had no authority to investigate.

Some more detail in this morning's papers on that raid yesterday at the Office of Special Counsel that involved two dozen FBI agents serving subpoenas on 17 employees in a raid that lasted more than five hours. All indications remain that this is a probe focused on Special Counsel Scott Bloch, but Government Executive reports that the scope is surprising:

But OSC employees said the grand jury subpoenas seek a wide range of information that goes beyond Bloch's deletion of computer files or treatment of agency employees.

Investigators have demanded all files on OSC's investigation last year into allegations of improper political activity by Lurita Doan, the former head of the General Services Administration, who was forced to resign last week by the White House.

In addition, investigators demanded documents related to OSC's investigation into allegations that Secretary of State Rice used federal resources to travel to campaign appearances supporting President Bush's re-election in 2004. Bloch's office closed the case, finding no violation by Rice.

Oh, and don't forget the towels:

An official present during the raid yesterday said federal agents asked for access to computers and e-mail messages from Bloch and from the mid-level workers who received subpoenas. Investigators also sought credit card receipts, an agency employee said. Some staff members had complained that Bloch used agency funds to buy for his office restroom $400 hand towels decorated with a special OSC seal, according to another person familiar with the raid.

The towels were a legit perk, a spokesman told Justin at ABC:

"Scott, as a presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed member of the administration gets an allowance for things," spokesman Jim Mitchell explained. "He paid about $300 for some towels that had the OSC seal on it. He took a couple home, which he paid for himself."

From The Wall Street Journal:

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

The independent agency, created by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is charged with protecting federal employees and deciding whether their complaints merit full-scale investigation -- a first line of defense against fraud and mismanagement in government. It also enforces a ban on U.S. employees engaging in partisan political activity.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Mr. Bloch had used "Geeks on Call," an outside computer-service firm, to erase his computer and those of two former staff members in December 2006....

The computer erasures became part of that investigation and are one of the reasons behind today's raid, employees said.

To refresh your memory, Bloch's agency is a little known one that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politicizing his office. The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been conducting that investigation since 2005. The feds are apparently investigating whether Bloch tried to obstruct that investigation by deleting his hard drive, among other things.

To give you an idea how fraught this investigation is with unique issues, Bloch is not only busily investigating the White House for political briefings Karl Rove and his aides made to various agencies, but he's also conducting an investigation of the politicization at the Department of Justice and issues related to the U.S. Attorney firings -- a probe that he complained was being blocked by the DoJ. Of course, he can't do much to block the DoJ investigation of him.

Update: NPR, also reporting on the raid, reports that the entire's office email system was shut down this morning.

It's hard enough to get the facts straight when allegations are made. But everything gets all the more complicated in the Bush Administration's hall of mirrors; it's all pots and kettles.

Consider this dust-up between the Office of Special Counsel and the Justice Department. In one corner, you have Special Counsel Scott Bloch, who heads an obscure little office that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politicizing his office. Oh, and he used a tech service called Geeks on Call to scrub his hard drive at work (he says all the info was personal). In the other corner, you have the Justice Department, and well, you know all about that.

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey last week, Bloch charged that the Department was blocking his probe of politicization in the DoJ, his investigation of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias' firing (was it because of his Navy reserve service?), and a whistleblower complaint against former U.S. attorney Rachel Paulose. Eric Black, who reported on the letter last night, has helpfully posted a copy here (pdf).

In the letter, Bloch complains that 1) after the Justice Department launched its own internal investigation of the U.S. attorney firings and politicization in the Department last spring, they asked him to back off, and 2) the DoJ has refused to investigate a whistleblower complaint against Paulose.

Bloch's job, at least under the Bush administration, is to write investigatory reports which the White House will then ignore. Tellingly, Bloch complains in the letter that he's been trying to get White House counsel Fred Fielding on the phone for two months and had no luck.

Read more »

And here you thought Stuart Bowen was a paragon of integrity.

Bowen is the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). Despite being an old buddy of George W. Bush's back in the Texas days, Bowen has earned a reputation as a tireless investigator of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq contracting.

The quarterly reports issued by SIGIR have not hesitated to name names of both crooked contractors and crooked contracting officials. Bowen's appearances on Capitol Hill have been remarkably candid and free of euphemism. When I was in Baghdad in March, military public-affairs officers jumped at the chance to show me how they interface with SIGIR and boasted of the enormous respect they have for an office that's all up in their business.

But now, reports The Washington Post, the worm has turned. SIGIR faces four separate investigations -- including one by a federal grand jury -- looking into everything from its own profligacy to its alleged abundance of ego:

Current and former employees have complained about overtime policies that allowed 10 staff members to earn more than $250,000 each last year. They have questioned the oversight of a $3.5 million book project about Iraq's reconstruction modeled after the 9/11 Commission report. And they have alleged that Bowen and his deputy have improperly snooped into their staff's e-mail messages.

The employee allegations have prompted four government probes into the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), including an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors into the agency's financial practices and claims of e-mail monitoring, according to law enforcement sources and SIGIR staff members. Federal prosecutors have presented evidence of alleged wrongdoing to a grand jury in Virginia, which has subpoenaed SIGIR for thousands of pages of financial documents, contracts, personnel records and correspondence, several sources familiar with the probe said.

Bowen, with no evident irony, dismisses many of the charges as the result of "disgruntled" employees. Yet some of the overtime that certain SIGIR officials have racked up is downright gaudy (1400 hours?).

One SIGIR official spoke anonymously of a climate of fear that pervades the office. SIGIR's chiefs are "gripped by paranoia. It's almost a siege mentality." Such alleged paranoia, according to federal prosecutors, has led top officials to illegally snoop on their employees. One of them, Ginger Cruz, Bowen's deputy, allegedly used, um, witchcraft to intimidate subordinates:

Read more »

The Washington Post has an update to Special Counsel Scott Bloch's alleged scheme to have geeks scrub his hard drive (for background click here). Turns out that Bloch has the files that he erased on a thumb drive, but he's not turning them over, no sir: They're personal. And it's sparked a good bit of squabbling amongst the White House's ineffectual investigative agencies (in this case the other party is the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general).

But here's the part that's good. Earlier this year, Bloch launched, to great fanfare, a sprawling investigation of Karl Rove's alleged efforts to politicize the federal government, but it seems not to have gotten very far. But maybe, Bloch's enemies are saying, the investigation was just a canny ploy to incapacitate the investigations of him:

Attorneys representing the staff members in the complaints against Bloch cited the latest dispute in calling for his resignation.

"At the time that he initiated this probe of Karl Rove, we thought he was doing this to make himself bulletproof so the White House could not take disciplinary action against him," said Debra Katz, an attorney for the staff members. Bloch denied that charge and said the Rove investigation is the responsibility of his office.

Ah, oversight.

It's just not enough that a number of administration officials have been investigated for malfeasance; the Bush Administration takes it the extra mile. The man who's charged with investigating some of that malfeasance is himself under investigation. And he's clearly no slouch at malfeasance.

Scott Bloch heads the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an odd little agency that was set up to police federal employees of infractions that do not rise to the criminal level. The OSC's main brief is enforcing the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using government resources for political ends (so Bloch should be a busy man). He's also supposed to make sure whistleblowers do not suffer retaliation. The OSC reports to the White House.

Bloch himself has been under investigation since 2005 for a variety of infractions, including retaliating against employees who took issue with internal policies and discriminating against those who were gay or members of religious minorities. At the direction of the White House, the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been pressing on with an investigation of Bloch.

Which makes this all the more curious. From The Wall Street Journal:

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, [Bloch] confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer....

Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency....

Geeks on Call visited Mr. Bloch's government office in a nondescript office building on M Street in Washington twice, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 21, 2006, according to a receipt reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The total charge was $1,149, paid with an agency credit card, the receipt shows. The receipt says a seven-level wipe was performed but doesn't mention any computer virus.

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington's Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," he said.

The punchline to all this is that even if Bloch were a paragon of integrity, his investigations of administration wrongdoing would be nearly pointless. For instance, Bloch launched an investigation of General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan after she asked her fellow employees "How can we help our candidates?" The comments had come after a political briefing by Karl Rove's aide. Bloch's investigation concluded that Doan should be fired. But that was in June. Bloch made his recommendation to the White House, which has done nothing since. And as for Bloch's wide-ranging probe of Karl Rove's political briefings to federal officials throughout the government? Don't count on any results. It's enough to make a man cynical.

Back in April, Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, announced that his office would "leave no stone unturned" in pursuing White House malfeasance. In fact, a special task force was assembled to handle all of Karl Rove's alleged dirty doings.

Problem is, Bloch apparently forged ahead without actually having the money to fund the task force. And as Justin reports over at The Blotter, it's not looking like he'll be able to land that extra $3 million. So some of those stones might just have to stay right where they are.

Without a last-minute infusion of nearly $3 million, the special task force may be unable to pay its staff and buy the kind of technical equipment it needs to investigate allegations that White House political operatives may have improperly injected politics into government activities, according to Jim Mitchell, spokesman for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel....

The cost of the task force for 2008 would be $2.89 million, according to OSC estimates. But Bloch started the probe long after he submitted his 2008 budget request. And now he's having a hard time convincing those holding the nation's purse strings to loosen up and give him some last-minute extra funding.

Read more »

Today the head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) told Lurita Doan, chief of the government's procurement agency, that she ought to step down.

Doan was back in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today where Democrats wanted to know why she gave the Office of Special Counsel information that seemed to contradict what she first told the committee under oath in March.

The Office of Special Counsel questioned Doan over a possible violation of the Hatch Act about a month after she faced the House Oversight Committee. In a letter to the president released yesterday, Special Counsel Scott Bloch said his findings show that Doan should be punished to the fullest extent possible, which would mean being fired.

The Hatch Act violation stems from a comment she made to her employees about helping Republican congressional candidates. Doan made the comment, according to General Services Administration employees present, at a January 26 meeting at the GSA where Karl Rove's deputy Scott Jennings put on a slideshow showing key House and Senate races coming up in the 2008 election cycle.

In March, Doan had little memory of the meeting, but when she spoke with the Office of Special Counsel she recalled many more details. She also made disparaging comments about GSA employees who cooperated in the investigation, calling them poor performers. She also implied that she'd be sure they would not receive promotions or bonuses in the future.

The head of the General Services Administration should be punished "to the fullest extent" (i.e. fired) for wrongfully attempting to help Republican candidates based on their political affiliation, Special Counsel Scott Bloch wrote in a letter to President Bush released last night.

Now GSA chief Lurita Doan's fate is up to the White House. Bloch's Office of Special Counsel, which is charged with investigating Hatch Act violations, interviewed Doan for nine hours over the course of two days and spoke with 21 GSA employees, the Associated Press reports:

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said they had received the Bloch letter and it was under review. The White House previously acknowledged conducting about 20 meetings over the past several years for federal employees on GOP election prospects while insisting that such informational briefings are neither unlawful nor unusual.

Doan is set to testify before the House Oversight Committee tomorrow.

The entire scheme has been laid out before us. The question now is whether Karl Rove will get away with it.

Here's the scheme, as revealed over the past month: Rove and his deputies traveled to various agencies throughout the government, lecturing management there about Republicans' political prospects. Which House and Senate members were in trouble? Which Democratic seats were vulnerable? What were the major issues in the election?

But there was a line to be drawn: no commands were to be given -- because such a directive would be a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, which forbids the use of government resources for political ends.

On the contrary, the government officials receiving the briefing were supposed to get the hint -- as Tom Hamburger reported, "employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans." The briefing simply gave them the tools to be helpful in the next election. They were supposed to take the ball and run with it.

The Washington Post reports today that Rove and his deputies gave such briefings to at least 15 different agencies (ranging from NASA to the Department of Homeland Security). But one briefing in particular continues to shine a light on all the rest: the one given this January to officials at the General Services Administration, the government's massive procurement agency.

Rove's deputy Scott Jennings simply showed up and gave the briefing (the slides (pdf) for which have been obtained by the House oversight committee -- that's one of them above). Employees were supposed to get the "not-so-subtle" message. But unfortunately for Jennings, GSA chief Lurita Doan doesn't do "not-so-subtle." From today's Post:

At its completion, GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan asked how GSA projects could be used to help "our candidates," according to half a dozen witnesses. The briefer, J. Scott Jennings, said that topic should be discussed "off-line," the witnesses said. Doan then replied, "Oh, good, at least as long as we are going to follow up," according to an account given by former GSA chief acquisition officer Emily Murphy to House investigators, according to a copy of the transcript.

"Something was going to take place potentially afterwards" regarding Doan's request, GSA deputy director of communications Jennifer Millikin told investigators she concluded at the time.

Doan was obviously supposed to come to the tacit understanding that such things should be discussed "off-line." But, as anyone who watched Doan testify before the House last month can attest, she doesn't think well on her feet.

Now, the White House has adopted the line that the briefings were simply to provide employees a look at "the political landscape." And apparently that talking point has been widely distributed, as R. Jeffrey Smith from the Post found:

By the end of yesterday afternoon, all of those describing the briefings on the record had adopted a uniform phrase in response to a reporter's inquiries: They were, each official said, "informational briefings about the political landscape."

It's all about plausible deniability. As Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel -- the office that is charged with investigating Hatch Act violations -- tells Smith, "Political forecasts, just generally . . . I do not regard as illegal political activity." Bloch, remember, is the one who announced to the world earlier this week that he'd leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of Karl Rove. (There's more on Bloch here.)

The burning question here is this: what about those agency officials who are smarter than Doan? The briefings have been going on since the beginning of the Bush administration. Somebody got the hint, had that "offline" conversation, and successfully helped "our candidates." How many? When? Where?