New Memo Details Allegations Against GSA Administrator

I watched the hearing on C-SPAN yesterday. Lurita Doan didn't do a very good job avoiding lies under oath by taking "the I don't recall" excuse as her best defense against violating the Hatch Act. ---BBB

New Memo Details Allegations Against GSA Administrator
By Daniel Friedman
The Federal Times
Tuesday 27 March 2007

Even as the head of the General Services Administration prepares to address allegations of improper conduct at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday, new information about her actions continues to emerge.

A March 27 memorandum from committee Democrats states that GSA Administrator Lurita Doan overrode longtime contracting officers to intervene on behalf of Sun Microsystems in a pricing dispute with the agency "after direct intervention by Sun representatives with Doan herself."

That and other details show that Doan misled Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in a March 13 letter playing down her involvement with the Sun Microsystems contract, the memo says. Grassley was added to the committee's witness list on Tuesday.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that an assistant to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove briefed GSA political appointees on polling data during a January teleconference in which Doan also discussed how GSA could help 2008 Republican candidates. The participation of the official, Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of political affairs, could strengthen previously reported charges that the call violated the Hatch Act, which outlaws federal employees from using their positions for partisan political purposes.

Jennings' role also linked the allegations against Doan to the scandal regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. Jennings was involved in the dismissal of Bud Cummins III, the U.S. attorney in Arkansas ousted to make way for another Rove deputy. The disclosure of a White House role in the GSA call ratcheted up media coverage of the issue.

The significance of the allegations against Doan, however, is disputed in a 38-page report on the investigation by the committee's ranking Republican member, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.

Davis notes that after Doan referred to "helping our candidates" during the teleconference, concerns "that this was inappropriate were addressed immediately and the discussion was terminated." And after specific candidates, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Mel Martinez, D-Fla., were mentioned, Jennings said, "this is not a conversation we need to be having at this time," according to one participant, and the call ended.

Davis' report says the committee's investigation has wasted time and "failed to establish that Doan engaged in any wrongdoing."

In an e-mail, the committee's Republican staff director, David Marin, said that the "allegations against the administrator are spurious and won't stand up to public scrutiny. The hearing title says it all: 'Allegations of Misconduct at GSA.' Not facts. Not findings. Not even credible complaints."

The committee's memo details a two-year dispute between GSA officials and Sun Microsystems, which Doan allegedly helped resolve in favor of the company.

Through a 1999 agreement with GSA, the company was authorized to sell information technology products and support services to agencies. But GSA auditors said Sun Microsystems failed to give the government the same discounts it offered to commercial clients, as required in its contract.

Contracting officers later determined that Sun Microsystems' failure to honor a clause in the agreement requiring it to grant agencies all the price reductions it gave to favored commercial clients cost the government $77 million between 1999 and 2005.

Between 2004 and 2006, at least three GSA contract officers refused to renew Sun's contract, the memo says. Instead they offered Sun Microsystems a series of short-term renewals while negotiating with the company.

In January 2006, GSA's inspector general's office determined that Sun Microsystems misled GSA negotiators about the discount it gave certain customers. The office also shared its findings with federal prosecutors.

In February 2006, contract officials determined they had reached an impasse and recommended ending the contract.

Within minutes of learning of decision, Doan questioned it, the committee memo says. According to an e-mail to her chief of staff, Doan wrote, "There will be serious consequences felt across FAS [GSA's Federal Acquisition Service] since Sun now intends to run most of its business through SEWP."

SEWP is NASA's Scientific Engineering Workstations Program that, like GSA, does contracting for other agencies. GSA, which relies on contracting fees for most of its budget, has lost revenue to entities like SEWP in recent years and views them as competitors.

The committee memo cites e-mails by a GSA official working for Doan describing efforts to find a contract officer who would award a contract to Sun Microsystems and then negotiate retroactive negotiations. An employee who eventually did award a contract on terms previously rejected by GSA later received a $1,400 bonus directly tied to her effort to resolve the impasse and a transfer to Colorado, a move she had previously requested and been denied.

The memo notes that a calendar entry shows Doan scheduled an August 2006 call with FAS Commissioner Jim Williams and Sun Microsystems. Williams also told the committee he updated Doan on conversations with the company's officials.

That seems to contradict Doan's letter to Grassley, the memo says. She wrote: "I have never met nor had any discussions with Sun Microsystems managers since becoming Administrator of GSA." And, "I had no knowledge of negotiations or the basis for decisions made regarding this contract prior to preparing for this submission."

A Sun Microsystems spokeswoman declined to comment on whether prosecutors are investigating the contract negotiations. She said the company is not concerned that any of its employees engaged in improper conduct.

"Government contracts are routinely audited," she said in a statement. "Sun Microsystem's policy is to fully cooperate in such audits, and we will continue to do so in the future.... Any suggestion that GSA gave Sun special treatment during the negotiation process simply does not fit the facts."

The committee's investigation into Doan started after a January report by The Washington Post that she improperly tried to award a sole-source contract to her friend and former business associate, despite lacking authority to do so.

In prepared testimony e-mailed today to GSA employees, Doan admitted she had made a mistake, but said she had stopped when counseled to do so by staff. She said testimony by former GSA General Counsel Alan Swediman that he repeatedly told her to terminate the contract "is completely untrue."

Doan said she had no knowledge of the bonus or transfer of the employee who gave Sun the contract. And Doan reasserted that she had no knowledge of the negotiations with Sun Microsystems.

As she has previously, Doan also said that allegations against her result from her effort to trim growth in the GSA inspector general's budget.

"The IG fiercely resisted this effort and many of the visits, information and reports that have been provided to [the committee] and other members of Congress over the past several months stem from this disagreement.... As our [internal budget] process moved forward," Doan wrote, "I learned that the [Office of the Inspector General] had made spending decisions that seemed hard to justify and in my view constituted a complete breakdown of oversight and authority."