1 Boring Old Man

Low-key office launches high-profile inquiry
The Office of Special Counsel will investigate U.S. attorney firings and other political activities led by Karl Rove

Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

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The decision by Bloch’s office is the latest evidence that Rove’s once-vaunted operations inside the government, which helped the GOP hold the White House and Congress for six years, now threaten to mire the administration in investigations.

The question of improper political influence over government decision-making is at the heart of the controversy over the firing of U.S. attorneys and the ongoing congressional investigation of the special e-mail system installed in the White House and other government offices by the Republican National Committee.

In my last post, I read the L.A. Times article about the investigation of Rove, and felt excited. Was it possible that there would be a real investigation. So I wrote my first few paragraphs? Then I looked up the Office of Special Counsel. I wondered, "Had someone found an Agency uncontaminated by the Administration?" and wrote some more. Then, I put Scott Bloch into Google, and found that others had already discovered that he was a Republican Operative extrordinaire.

What I hate is being put in the position of being cynical enough these days to be Googling Scott Bloch immediately to be sure this isn’t a fraudulent investigation to run out their clock in office and cover-up the whole thing. I hate that they’ve done this to us – turned us into a bunch of reflex paranoids. Only, unfortunately, we’re "pseudo-paranoid," because, as usual, our skepticism and suspicions turn out to be right.

F.B.I. Raids Office of Special Counsel

The office of the official responsible for protecting federal workers from political interference was raided by F.B.I. agents on Tuesday as part of an investigation into whether he himself mixed politics with official business.

The raid took place at the office of Scott J. Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel. Computers and documents were seized by agents trying to determine whether Mr. Bloch obstructed justice by hiring an outside company to “scrub” his computer files, The Associated Press reported. Investigators also searched Mr. Bloch’s home in suburban Virginia after obtaining a subpoena.

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Mr. Bloch was in the news a year ago when his office began to look into political briefings given to employees of several agencies by aides to Karl Rove, who was then President Bush’s chief political adviser. The White House insisted at the time that the briefings met the definitions of allowable activities.

Mr. Bloch’s critics quickly accused him of announcing an inquiry into the Rove-inspired briefings simply to draw attention away from his own shortcomings. At the time, he was the target of a complaint filed by a group of employees who accused him of trying to dismantle his own agency, of illegally barring employees from talking to journalists and of reducing a backlog of whistle-blower complaints by simply discarding old cases…

Last week, the White House forced out Lurita A. Doan, the head of the General Services Administration, after Mr. Bloch’s office determined that she had improperly mixed politics with government business…

Republicans call for testimony from US special counsel

Republicans in Congress today called for a subpoena to force testimony from Scott Bloch, the US special counsel whose mission is helping government whistleblowers, after law enforcement agents carried out a daylong raid on his home and office. The FBI is probing whether Bloch, who leads the office of the special counsel (OSC), destroyed evidence relevant to a White House misconduct inquiry against him. He has been caught in a bind for a year, investigating the Bush administration for misuse of government resources while the White House was investigating him.

Republican congressman Tom Davis today urged that Bloch be forced to answer questions he has long avoided about using taxpayer money to erase his government computer. "Democrats weren’t all that crazy about Scott Bloch … but when he trained his sights on the Bush administration, they were all too willing to let him slide," Davis said in a statement.

Computers and documents were seized in two raids yesterday on OSC headquarters and Bloch’s suburban Virginia home. Bloch was not arrested or charged with a crime, and an OSC spokesman told the Associated Press he knew of no motive for the raids. Bloch admitted to paying Geeks on Call, a technology company, $1,150 to wipe his computer clean in 2006, which he claimed was necessary to protect personal information.

He is also accused of neglecting whistleblower complaints that crossed his desk….