Agency watching the agencies walks fine line on conflict-of-interest issues

Even as a House committee yesterday approved two subpoenas for the Republican National Committee in the growing White House e-mail scandal, the agency investigating whether the executive branch illegally misused federal resources for political purposes continued to tangle with critics of its own.

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has tapped a task force to begin a broad inquiry into alleged politicization at Bush administration agencies — a charge that has united the scandals regarding the U.S. attorneys and the General Services Administration (GSA) in the view of many Democrats. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday issued two new subpoenas in that inquiry.

{mosads}The OSC plans to touch on the use of political-party e-mail addresses by White House aides and the campaign-season PowerPoint slides shown at the GSA, among other issues. But the attorney representing former employees in a complaint against their former boss, OSC Director Scott Bloch, has joined several watchdog groups in calling on Bloch to recuse himself from White House investigation.

The attorney and the watchdogs argue that Bloch’s involvement could violate the Hatch Act, which bars federal agencies from politicking, and say he should step aside until the OSC whistleblowers’ case is complete.

“You have to wonder if the people’s interest will outweigh one person’s desire to protect his own skin,” Beth Daley, director of investigations at the Project on Government Oversight, said in a Tuesday statement.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning group active on congressional ethics, also is urging Bloch to step aside from the OSC’s White House probe. The charges against Bloch remain under scrutiny by the inspector general of the White House’s Office of Personnel Management.

Loren Smith, OSC’s director of congressional and public affairs, noted that a career employee rather than Bloch will head the task force steering the inquiry. Bloch told CNN yesterday that the inquiry will be “thorough,” adding that he does not believe at this point that White House senior adviser Karl Rove — the target of Democratic suspicions — had acted improperly.

“The law charges us with doing the job and that’s what we’re going to do,” Smith said. He added that the matter will have no effect on OSC’s ability to investigate the White House, even though “we look forward to [the whistleblowers’ complaint] being over.”

The task force will examine allegations of Hatch violations at multiple agencies, including the GSA and Justice Department.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who raised questions about Bloch’s reorganization at the OSC when she chaired the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said his presence at the agency would have no impact on its ability to investigate the administration impartially.

“It is the duty of the OSC to investigate complaints about violations of the Hatch Act, so it appears that he’s carrying out his mission, which is appropriate,” Collins said.

Smith pointed to recent OSC reprimands of a Bush-appointed state rural director at the Agriculture Department and two complaints against politicking at NASA as evidence that the office is active in probing Hatch violations.