By Kenneth J. Theisen
Last week, Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration
(GSA) was forced to resign in the wake of a political scandal. Doan was
accused of violating the law by improperly attempting to utilize the
GSA to assist Republican political candidates by U.S. Office of Special
Counsel (OSC) headed by Scott J. Bloch. On May 6, 2008, in what may be
a case of political payback, Bloch’s office was raided by a score of
F.B.I. agents, allegedly as part of an investigation into whether Bloch
mixed politics with official government business. Documents and
computers were taken by the F.B.I. The F.B.I. also raided Bloch’s home
and seized materials there.
The OSC provides advice to federal employees on the Hatch Act, which is supposed to keep partisan political politics from interfering with government business. The OSC informs employees which activities are allowed or disallowed. Part of OSC’s duties is to protect whistle-blowers who report political interference.
Normally OSC stays out of the public limelight. But Bloch and OSC interfered in a Bush regime political operation, and this put them in direct contention with Karl Rove, Bush’s former top political operative who was often referred to as Bush’s brain. At a January 26, 2007 meeting of over 30 GSA managers an aide to Karl Rove, J. Scott Jennings, briefed them about the 2006 mid-term elections and the political outlook for the 2008 elections. After the presentation Doan allegedly asked, “What can we do to help our candidates?”
According to the Los Angeles Times other such meetings were held at most other Cabinet agencies and presentations were made by Rove and other White House officials. The fact that the Bush regime was mobilizing the resources of the federal government to gain partisan advantage in elections was revealed by the OSC’s investigation into Doan’s activities. A report was issued that declared, “The GSA administrator displayed no reservations in her willingness to commit GSA resources, including its human capital, to the Republican Party. Her actions constitute an obvious misuse of her official authority and were made for the purpose of affecting the result of an election. One can imagine no greater violation of the Hatch Act than to invoke the machinery of an agency, with all its contracts and buildings, in the service of a partisan campaign to retake the Congress.”
The Bush regime responded that the meetings described above where Rove and other regime officials made presentations to federal government employees (many of whom are political appointees who can be fired directly by the administration) and pressure them to “help our candidates” were perfectly legitimate. Of course the administration saw nothing wrong with using executive agencies directly under the president to win elections. But then a regime that stole two presidential elections would not be expected to be bothered by laws such as the Hatch Act which were designed to avoid such misuse of power.
It is not clear what the exact purpose of the raids on Mr. Bloch’s office and home is. Bloch has also been accused of ignoring whistle blowers claims, of abusing and ignoring employees in the OSC, of erasing materials from his computers and other misdeeds. He may indeed be guilty of these acts. But then in the Bush administration these deeds may be regular conduct of top-level officials. These misdeeds could also be the excuse for political payback for exposing the prior misdeeds of the Bush administration. Remember this is the same regime that “outed” the CIA agent Valerie Wilson as payback to her husband for exposing one of the Bush regime lies that led to the invasion of Iraq.
Ken Theisen is a veteran activist of movements opposing U.S. imperialism, its wars and domination of countries throughout the world, and an advocate against domestic violence in the San Francisco Bay Area.