Investigate the Investigators

[W1nTry]

Hmm....

Special Counsel is under investigation

Comment For using Geeks on Call

By Egan Orion: Wednesday, 28 November 2007, 9:22 AM

THE HEAD of the US Office of Special Counsel is being investigated for having had some computers' hard disks scrubbed, the Washington Post has reported.

Scott Bloch is in charge of the federal government agency that's responsible for enforcing the prohibition against serving federal employees becoming involved in partisan political activities and for protecting government whistleblowers.

His office is conducting the investigation seeking to determine whether former presidential assistant Karl Rove and other White House staffers committed any illegal partisan political acts while in office.

Appropriate targets for such an investigation might be anything like, well... say, orchestrating the "caging", that is, systematic disenfranchisement, of minority voters in swing states during the runup to the 2004 elections. Or,... conspiring with the appointees in the US Justice Department to politicise that organisation, including arranging political screening in the hiring of attorneys and dismissing US Attorneys who refused to indict political opponents just prior to elections or who pursued the corruption prosecutions of Republican political party loyalists.

According to an article that appeared last April in the Los Angeles Times, the Office of Special Counsel is looking into "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." Mr. Bloch told the Times in April, "We will take the evidence where it leads us. We will not leave any stone unturned." That does sound like he's independent and trying to do his job.

Now, at the instigation of the White House, Mr. Bloch is being investigated, by the inspector general of the Office of Personnel Management, over claims that he dismissed whistleblowers' allegations without appropriate investigations and that he illegally retaliated against employees.

Investigators recently learned that Mr. Bloch bypassed his agency's computer support staff to have all of the files erased from his office computer as well as two computers used by top assistants who had departed. They are looking into whether the hard disk erasures were part of a coverup or otherwise improper.

Mr. Bloch phoned the mobile PC support service Geeks on Call and had their technicians perform a so-called "seven-level wipe" of the computers' hard disks during two separate visits over a span of three days in December, 2006. That's a procedure conforming to US military data security standards that is usually applied to hard disks that had held classified or otherwise highly sensitive data and that makes any forensic data recovery virtually impossible. In an interview, Mr. Bloch confirmed that he'd called in Geeks on Call but claimed that he was only trying to eliminate a virus that had his machine in thrall. Maybe he had his departed assistants' laptops wiped clean also just in case they'd got a virus too.

Jeff Phelps, the manager of the Washington DC Geeks on Call franchise, would not discuss services performed for Mr. Bloch, but said that calls to government offices are unusual. He also stated, "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus."

Clay Johnson, the White House official who's directing the Office of Personnel Management's review of Mr. Bloch's conduct, declined to comment. Erasing data files or otherwise destroying evidence in any federal investigation can be prosecuted as obstruction of justice, depending on the circumstances involved.

Mr. Bloch denied that documents relevant to any investigation were deleted. He said the employees' allegations against him are unwarranted, and believes that the White House might have a conflict of interest in pressing an investigation of his conduct while his office is investigating its political operatives' activities. He said, "I have nothing to hide and I've cooperated with all legitimate requests."

The US Office of Special Counsel was established by Congress in the aftermath of President Nixon's forced resignation to avoid impeachment in the Watergate scandal 33 years ago. It is intended to fight illegal political activity by officials.

President Bush appointed Mr. Bloch to head up the Office of Special Counsel in 2003. Previously, Mr. Bloch had worked in the Justice Department in the office of "faith-based" programs, which are part of the Republicans' efforts to subvert the separation of church and state enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Mr. Bloch was a loyal apparatchik for the current administration.

However, unlike all other presidential appointees except for federal judges and members of the US Supreme Court, who serve for life terms, Mr. Bloch doesn't serve at the pleasure of the president. He serves a five-year term in office and may be removed only for official malfeasance.

Mr. Bloch's office is investigating the suspicious circumstances surrounding the disappearance of numerous emails that have reportedly gone missing from the White House archives. A federal judge ordered the White House to preserve all of its emails earlier this month, due to lawsuits filed by private organisations, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government and The National Security Archive. They've alleged that up to five million White House emails are missing.

Ironically, investigators for the Office of Personnel Management want to see all of Mr. Bloch's emails, too. They also want a copy of an encrypted flash drive he bought from Geeks on Call.

The White House certainly couldn't have wanted its relations with the Office of Special Counsel to come to this pass. They must have thought Mr. Bloch was a loyal party member above all, even his oath to the US Constitution, as are most all other administration officials and staff. They might have expected he would play Mr. Magoo, poking about in the shrubbery looking for evidence of littering while they proceeded to shred the US Constitution and Bill of Rights wholesale right in front of him. It seems obvious they didn't expect him to try to do his job.

But it appears that he has actually been trying to do his job, and is even being somewhat effective at it. So it looks like they're trying to set Mr. Bloch up for a charge of malfeasance so they can remove him before he further embarrasses the White House or worse, starts referring people like Karl Rove and perhaps others for prosecutions that could land them in federal prison doing hard time.

Or maybe it's not that serious. This is an administration that rejects oversight categorically and abhors accountability of any kind, at any level. It operates in such secrecy whenever it can that it can accurately be described as paranoid, according to the clinical definition of that term.

Perhaps it simply can't stand having that pesky Office of Special Counsel doing anything remotely resembling what's outlined in its charter, that is, protecting government whistleblowers and forwarding their allegations to investigators and prosecutors, and investigating violations of Hatch Act prohibitions against the politicisation of federal government agencies, operations and employees.

With Mr. Bloch gone, the president can appoint someone else more amenable to looking the other way, or just leave the position unfilled. Further, unlike Mr. Bloch, the other attorneys and investigators at the Office of Special Counsel are not well insulated from political pressure. The administration would merely need to fire a couple of them before the rest fell in line to protect their careers.

This administration, and its fawning White House fishwrapper the Washington Post, are trying to spin this story such that Mr. Bloch must have had those hard drives scrubbed because they contained incriminating emails or other evidence of wrong-doing on his part. As Mr. Bloch quoted an old Washington DC saying, "You're innocent until investigated."

But, what if it's actually the other way around?

Perhaps Mr. Bloch is trying to balance his oath to uphold the US Constitution with his loyalty to the Republican party and the White House administration. If he had received an email or other evidence of an explosive nature, might he be tempted to back up that information and then expunge it from his hard drives beyond any capability of subsequent retrieval? Wouldn't that explain his action?

Of course we don't know, but it makes for an interesting possibility, doesn't it?

Whatever the truth is here, we hope Mr. Bloch will have the good sense to back up that encrypted flash drive and store the copy somewhere secret and secure, like a safe in the office an attorney of his acquaintance whom he really trusts.