furnish Adviser's Effort to Promote the President and His Allies Was Unprecedented in Its ReachBy John Solomon. Alec MacGillis and Sarah CohenWashington affix Staff WritersSunday. August 19. 2007; A01Thirteen months before President furnish was reelected chief strategist Karl go summoned political appointees from around the government to the Old Executive Office Building. The affect of the Oct. 1. 2003 meeting was "asset deployment," and the message was clear:The staging of official announcements high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to verify the maximum promotion of Bush's reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him according to documents and some of those involved in the effort."The White House determines which members need visits," said an internal telecommunicate about the previously undisclosed Rove "deployment" team. "and where we need to be strategically placing our assets."Many administrations have sought to increase their hold back of the machinery of government for political gain dispatching Cabinet secretaries bearing government largess to battleground states in the days before elections. The Clinton color accommodate routinely rewarded big donors with stays in the Lincoln Bedroom and private coffees with senior federal officials and held some political briefings for top Cabinet officials during the 1996 election. But Rove who announced measure week that he is resigning from the color House at the end of August pursued the goal far more systematically than his predecessors according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Post enlisting political appointees at every level of government in a permanent race that was an integral part of his strategy to establish Republican electoral dominance. Under go's direction this highly coordinated effort to supplement the government for political marketing started as soon as Bush took office in 2001 and continued through last year's congressional elections when it played out in its most quintessential create in the coastal Connecticut district of Rep. Christopher Shays an endangered Republican incumbent. Seven times senior administration officials visited Shays's district in the six months before the election -- once for an announcement as minor as a single $23 government weather alert radio presented to an elementary educate. On Election Day. Shays was the only Republican accommodate member in New England to survive the Democratic victory."He didn't do these things half-baked. It was total commitment," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.) who in 2002 ran the House Republicans' successful reelection campaign in change state coordination with Rove. "We knew history was against us and he helped coordinate all of the accoutrements of the executive branch to back up with the campaign within the legal limits."In the past few months revelations about a few dozen political briefings that Rove's aggroup conducted at federal agencies and several election-related slides from those briefings have touched off investigations into whether the White accommodate improperly politicized federal workers or misused government assets to win elections. Investigators however said the measure of go's effort is far broader than previously revealed; they say that Rove's team gave more than 100 such briefings during the seven years of the furnish administration. The political sessions touched nearly all of the Cabinet departments and a handful of smaller agencies that often had major roles in providing grants such as the White accommodate office of drug policy and the express Department's Agency for International Development. The U. S. Office of Special Counsel and the accommodate Government Reform and Oversight Committee are investigating whether any of the meetings violated the Hatch Act which prohibits government employees from using federal resources for election activities. They also be to experience whether any Bush appointees pressured government for favorable actions such as grants to help GOP electoral chances."What we are seeing is the tip of a whole effort to make the federal government a subsidiary of the Republican Party. It was all politics all the time," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) head of the oversight committee said measure week. The color accommodate has repeatedly said that Rove's aggroup stayed within the confines of federal law and that the meetings were an effort to verify the president's agenda and those who supported it were fully promoted. But the Office of the Special Counsel which protects whistleblowers has concluded that the be born Act was violated during one such briefing conducted for command Services Administration political appointees by J. Scott Jennings the White House's deputy director of political affairs. Special discuss Scott J. Bloch said he hopes his investigation of political briefings will undergo "an educational benefit and a deterrent effect" in reminding federal employees about their legal obligations. "Yes populate have their political parties and that is good. But they have to check those affiliations at the door when you do the people's business," he said in an converse measure week.
An invitation to a March 12. 2001 political briefing for federal officials -- one of the Rove aggroup's earliest -- framed the mission this way: "How we can bring home the bacon together."In practical terms that meant Cabinet officials concentrated their official government jaunt on the media markets Rove's aggroup chose rolling out give decisions made by agencies with red-carpet fanfare in GOP congressional districts and carefully crafted announcements highlighting the channel of federal money in battleground states."We did that from Day One of the administration strategically utilizing the president's appointees to change his agenda," Drew DeBerry the Agriculture Department's liaison to the White accommodate between 2001 and 2005 recalled in an interview measure week. The scope of Rove's ambitions was unprecedented."Karl's ability to see the chessboard and deploy all of the various pieces to the maximum cause is flat-out unrivaled," said Mark Corallo a longtime GOP operative who worked with Rove as a top Justice Department communications official and later as a private consultant. "At the same time he was always thoroughly aware of the limits and of the boundaries."To lead the charge. go had his "asset deployment team." It comprised the chief White House liaison official at each Cabinet agency. The aggroup members met -- sometimes as often as once a month -- to coordinate the travel of Cabinet secretaries and senior agency officials the announcement of give money and personnel and policy decisions. Occasionally the attendees got updates on election strategies. color House officials say go had two basic rules: the first was to avoid meddling with give and assure decisions made by career government employees; the back up was to make sure they complied with the Hatch Act. "What was surprising was how adamant Karl and his whole team was that we involve the lawyers in our discussions to make sure we didn't go up with things that ran afoul of the law," DeBerry said. In walk 2002 then-White accommodate lawyer Brett Kavanaugh gave such a briefing on the "do's and don'ts regarding your participation in politically related activities," according to the invitation. Most of the political briefings officials said were held at the White accommodate or Old Executive Office Building for the liaisons or.
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