Watchdog: Doc Shows Bloch Ginned Up White House Investigation to Protect Himself

[maddezmom]

Watchdog: Doc Shows Bloch Ginned Up White House Investigation to Protect Himself
By Paul Kiel - May 7, 2008, 3:13PM
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 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.

more:http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/watchdog_doc_shows_bloch_ginne.php

more:http://pogoarchives.org/m/wi/osc-tf-summary-20080118.pdf


Internal Draft Document Reveals Bloch-Headedness
Internal Draft Document Reveals Bloch-Headedness
POGO has gained access to an extraordinary internal document from the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency charged with protecting whistleblowers from reprisal. Clearly marked "DRAFT," it is a memo dated January 18, 2008, to Special Counsel Scott Bloch from the members of a special task force. The task force was created, according to the memo, in May 2007, "to pursue certain complex and high profile investigations, such as the firing of the U.S. Attorneys and the political presentations given by the White House Office of Political Affairs (OPA)." The stated subject of the memo is "Summary of Task Force Activities and Recommendations," but it reads at times like an anguished cry from investigators charged with an important mission but virtually every recommendation they make is countermanded by their boss. If they recommend going forward with an inquiry, Bloch says no. If they say they lack evidence or jurisdiction, he orders them to go forward.

The inescapable conclusion reached from poring through the contents of this 13-page memo is that Bloch was deliberately creating the impression of a huge ongoing multi-faceted investigation of the White House--at the same time that he himself was being investigated by another arm of the White House for various forms of misconduct.

Here is my analysis, along with some juicy quotes.

Office of Political Affairs:
The task force (TF) began to examine allegations that 25 federal agencies had received political briefings from the White House Office of Political Affairs that may have violated Hatch Act bans against the use of government resources to promote or oppose a political party or candidate. The task force received hundreds of documents from the agencies and thousands from the White House about the briefings. But as the investigators proceeded in their classic methodical way, they received new directions from their boss: transfer a Hatch Act complaint against Commerce Secretary Gutierrez from the Hatch Act Unit to the task force); merge two complaints against Karl Rove into the ongoing OPA investigation; draft new requests for information to the White House demanding copies of all email sent or received by 50 OPA employees from January 2001 through November 2007, from both the employees' government accounts and their RNC accounts.

The first cry of anguish followed: "TF expressed concerns that this request is too broad and may exceed OSC's jurisdiction" (emphasis in original).

But there was more. The Special Counsel demanded that the TF seek even more records from the White House: all travel records on Air Force One; all procedures for telephone and fax machines; all grant awards, etc. Again the protest from the task force: "After reviewing all documentation received and finding no information or evidence to suggest that agencies directed grants or agency resources to help candidates or political parties TF believes this request is overly broad."

more:http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2008/05/internal-draft.html

[Mountainman]

1. And we wonder why we can't figure out if he is a good guy or a bad guy.

[maddezmom]

2. the timing of all of it is strange

Doan quits:
Doan Speaks, Envisions Victory Dance
By Matthew Blake 05/05/2008 03:10PM
On Friday, The New York Times had a pithy assessment of ousted GSA Administrator Lurita Doan: "She exits as a minor but revealing character in a far more sweeping tale of the partisan undermining of public service."

Well, it's not like Lurita Doan to take such swipes lying down. Today she fired back on the airwaves of Federal News Radio, giving an interview that was over-the-top even by Doan's standards. The news from the interview is that White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and Counsel Fred Fielding told Doan she had to go, because she was a "distraction." Here are some other highlights:

-On the New York Times: "I think Thomas Jefferson said it right. He said the most accurate thing in the newspapers are the advertisements." Doan says The Times is advancing the "seductive theory" that Doan was fired for violating the Hatch Act. The real reason, Doan says, (and this might be true) is her endless feud with GSA Inspector General Brian Miller.

- On the White House demanding her resignation: Doan describes it as "bizarre" and "absolutely surreal" meeting with White House officials who called her a "distraction to progress at GSA."


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3299531&mesg_id=3299587

and then this:

White House tells court of missing emails from beginning of Iraq war

The White House has admitted in court that it has lost three months of email backups from the initial days of the Iraq war, raising questions about the possible deletion of politically sensitive records.

The disclosure came in a lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive, a non-profit group that specialises in uncovering classified documents.

The archive was told it could not receive emails relating to Iraq, despite a 30-year-old law requiring the preservation of presidential records, because a system upgrade had deleted up to 5m emails.

~snip~

The loss of White House emails also proved an obstacle to Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leaked identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Fitzgerald said in 2006 that he believed some potentially relevant emails sent by aides in vice president Dick Cheney's office were lost in the Bush administration's email system.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/07/usa.usforeignpolicy?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

[maddezmom]

7. Bloch-ing Justice: Who is Scott Bloch and why is the FBI investigating him?

He's a bad guy, IMO but still the timing of all this is very strange.

Bloch-ing Justice: Who is Scott Bloch and why is the FBI investigating him?
By Bill Berkowitz Wed May 07, 2008 at 04:50:59 PM EST print story


When Scott Bloch became head of the Office of Special Counsel he declared war on equal protection for gays in federal workplaces
In early October 2004, five Democratic members of Congress called on President Bush to "take the necessary action" in regards to Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel.

Bloch had refused "to enforce anti-discrimination protections for federal workers contradict Bush Administration policy to uphold former President Clinton's executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation," the Washington Blade had reported.

The letter to the president was signed by gay House members Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), along with Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and George Miller (D-Calif.).

On Tuesday, May 6, McClathchy Newspapers reported that "FBI agents ... searched the office and home of ... Bloch ... as part of an investigation into whether he obstructed an inquiry into allegations of his own misconduct."

Since his appointment the relatively unknown Bloch has been wielding a heavy hand and been the source of a series of controversies.

Who is Scott Bloch and how did he wind up as head of the Office of Special Counsel?

more:http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/5/7/165059/0878

[Richard Steele]

3. K&R

[Wilber_Stool]

4. I don't know about the rest

of you but I had to read that three times and I'm still having trouble making heads or tails of it. It'
s just one big circle jerk up there.

[maddezmom]

5. seems to me everyone is involved in their own cover-up?

:shrug:

[Disturbed]

6. "Missing Emails" is BULLSHIT!

Most of those are still on the HDs. Those could have been confiscated but Congress is just playing games.

[malaise]

8. Addling a link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3257211

[Octafish]

9. Proof of Concept for BFEE

These turds have taken "fox guarding the henhouse" to a whole new level. The person running the agency charged with ensuring the safety of those people trying to maintain the law -- the whistleblowers -- is an actuality protecting his own pimply hide -- and by extension his own "employer" -- from the law.

Incredible. But True.