GSA: No Recording of Doan Statements

[sabra]

Source: Government Executive

With all the conflicting testimony and claims of not being able to remember specific statements that are central to the Hatch Act violations leveled at General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan, one wonders if someone just may have recorded or videotaped the infamous January 26 meeting. That way we would know for sure what was, or was not, said.

Unfortunately, there is no such recording of the meeting held at the General Services Administration headquarters building in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, a deputy of White House political strategist Karl Rove presented to more than 30 agency political appointees a PowerPoint presentation that analyzed the results of the 2006 midterm election. The Office of Special Counsel ruled Doan violated the Hatch Act by inducing "her subordinates to engage in the type of political brainstorming session that is prohibited from occurring while the political appointees are on duty or in a federal workplace." Witnesses testified that Doan asked the presenter how GSA could help Republican candidates in the next election. Doan testified she cannot recall asking the question.

A recording of the meeting would help. But according to a reply to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Government Executive, none of the equipment used to facilitate the meeting -- which included attendees joining the meeting via video conference -- was set up for, or capable of, making an audio or video recording.

The response to the FOIA request states that the GSA video managers responsible for setting up the video conference said that the equipment used for the meeting was a standard Polycom MGC-50 audio/video bridge. The bridge is capable of bringing together 24 video and 48 audio sites on a single conference call, but is not equipped to record conversations.

Read more: http://blogs.govexec.com/techinsider/archives/2007/05/post_3.html

[alfredo]

1. Yeah right.

[Eugene]

2. K&R. This stinks to high heaven, but it's consistent with Rove's M.O.

There is no record because Karl "I deleted 5 million emails" Rove
wanted it exactly that way. No recording gear was connected and
nobody took the minutes. Really. It is good practice to keep
records of meetings, unless you are up to no good.