Office Of Special Counsel To Investigate Rove Activities

Bush may yet come to wish that he had simply fired Alberto Gonzales.

The Office of Special Counsel are to launch a wide ranging investigation into the 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.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part. "We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned."

Bloch declined to comment on who his investigators would interview, but he said the probe would be independent and uncoordinated with any other agency or government entity. 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 whether there was improper political influence over the firing of the US Attorney's is something that George Bush said had never been proven against Alberto Gonzales, which is why he yesterday said that his confidence in his Attorney General had "increased" after one of the most inept displays by any Attorney General in front of a Committee in living memory.

Now Bush will get to discover whether there was indeed any political impropriety in the actions of not only his Attorney General, but he'll also discover whether Karl Rove had any involvement in any illegality.

All administrations are political, but this White House has systematically brought electoral concerns to Cabinet agencies in a way unseen previously.

For example, Rove and his top aides met each year with presidential appointees throughout the government, using PowerPoint presentations to review polling data and describe high-priority congressional and other campaigns around the country.

Some officials have said they understood that they were expected to seek opportunities to help Republicans in these races, through federal grants, policy decisions or in other ways.

A former Interior Department official, Wayne R. Smith, who sat through briefings from Rove and his then-deputy Ken Mehlman, said that during President Bush's first term, he and other appointees were frequently briefed on political priorities. "We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results," Smith said.

This is the first time in the history of the 106-person Office of Special Counsel, that it has ever launched such a wide enquiry. This office was set up primarily to enforce The Hatch Act, a law which prevents parties using their office for political purposes. This was the reason Rove and others gave for having separate email accounts, saying that they couldn't use White House accounts for party business. Some five million of these emails are claimed to be missing.

The Office of Special Counsel say they will be looking into the firing of David C. Iglesias and a PowerPoint presentation that a Rove aide, J. Scott Jennings, made at the General Services Administration this year.

That presentation listed recent polls and the outlook for battleground House and Senate races in 2008. After the presentation, GSA Administrator Lorita Doan encouraged agency managers to "support our candidates," according to half a dozen witnesses.

Doan said she could not recall making such comments.

The Los Angeles Times has learned that similar presentations were made by other White House staff members, including Rove, to other Cabinet agencies. During such presentations, employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans.

The White House are claiming that, "It is entirely appropriate for the president's staff to provide informational briefings to appointees throughout the federal government about the political landscape in which they implement the president's policies and priorities."

When one thinks of Attorney's fired shortly after they had said that they were not willing to prosecute Democratics, then I'm not sure how long that line of defence is going to hold for.

It's hard to argue that you were just giving out general information when your staff are left feeling that - if they want to keep their jobs - then they must help Republicans to get re-elected.

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Tags: Office of Special Counsel, Karl Rove, investigation, Alberto Gonzales, fired US Attorney's