Yesterday, we noted that the FBI raided the home and office of Office of Special Counsel Scott Bloch. More news reports on the raids are out today. It appears that raids are part of a grand jury subpoenas related to the OSC's investigation of the use of federal resources for political activities by the White House, including Bloch's investigation of now-fired GSA head Lurita Doan.

The participation of the FBI and the grand jury, which is empaneled in Washington, indicates investigators are weighing criminal charges related to the [Office of Personnel Management] IG probe [of allegations by former OSC employees who say Bloch retaliated against them], such as obstruction of justice.

But OSC employees said the grand jury subpoenas seek a wide range of information that goes beyond Bloch's deletion of computer files or treatment of agency employees.

Investigators have demanded all files on OSC's investigation last year into allegations of improper political activity by Lurita Doan, the former head of the General Services Administration, who was forced to resign last week by the White House.

This bit in the CongressDaily (via GovExec) article deserves highlighting:

Republicans and other critics also have criticized Bloch for launching a wider investigation into political briefings White House officials conducted across the federal government. They have accused Bloch of trying to use the probe as leverage against possible moves by the White House to force his ouster due to his conduct at OSC.

Anyway, here are a couple more articles on the raids:

The New York Times, "F.B.I. Raids Office of Special Counsel"
McClatchy, "FBI agents sweep office, home of government watchdog"

Wow.

FBI agents on Tuesday raided the offices of Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, who oversees protection for federal whistleblowers. The agents seized computers and shut down email service as part of an obstruction of justice probe, NPR has exclusively learned.

FBI agents also searched Bloch's home and a Special Counsel field office in Dallas. A grand jury in Washington issued subpoenas for several OSC employees, including Bloch, according to NPR sources who spoke on condition their names not be used.

Those developments came about on a Tuesday morning that had seemed no different than any other weekday in the Washington headquarters of the Office of Special Counsel. But at 10 a.m., the OSC's national email system went down, and the FBI arrived.

And from TPM Muckraker, a reminder of what Bloch's deal is:

To refresh your memory, Bloch's agency is a little known one that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politicizing his office. The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been conducting that investigation since 2005. The feds are apparently investigating whether Bloch tried to obstruct that investigation by deleting his hard drive, among other things.

To give you an idea how fraught this investigation is with unique issues, Bloch is not only busily investigating the White House for political briefings Karl Rove and his aides made to various agencies, but he's also conducting an investigation of the politicization at the Department of Justice and issues related to the U.S. Attorney firings -- a probe that he complained was being blocked by the DoJ. Of course, he can't do much to block the DoJ investigation of him.

We last wrote about Bloch in November, when the WSJ reported that he was being investigated for shredding documents (i.e. "a 'seven-level' wipe [of several office hard drives]: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards).

When we last left Reading First -- the Bush Administration's "education program," in which the Education Department "inappropriately influence[d] the use of certain programs and assessments" and "created an environment that allowed real and perceived conflicts of interest" -- the president was decrying the slashing of its FY 2008 budget by congressional appropriators.

In March, at a Reading First program directors' meeting, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings implored the directors to "fight fiercely" for the program because "[]y]ou have seen the benefits of this program." And Tennessee Reading First director James Herman claimed that the program "has made so much of a difference in the lives of so many people."

According to a report released Thursday by the Education Department that Reading First doesn't actually make a difference:

• On average, across the 18 participating sites, estimated impacts on student reading comprehension test scores were not statistically significant.
• Average impacts on reading comprehension and classroom instruction did not change systematically over time as sites gained experience with Reading First.

WaPo published an op-ed Monday in which former senior Department of Defense officials Dov S. Zakheim and Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish (Ret.) note a recent GAO report that finds massive cost and schedule overruns in weapons acquisitions by the Pentagon. The report implicates a degradation of competition between contracting firms resulting in, according to Zajheim and Kadish (ZK, hereafter), "a kind of 'design bureau' competition, similar to what the Soviet Union used."

After complaining about an Air Force tanker project won by EADS, a European defense contractor, ZK conclude that what's really needed to curtail waste, fraud, and abuse in military contracting is increased competition in the defense market spurred by an increase in domestic defense firms. Without really explaining why, they also claim that "[m]ore regulations and bureaucratic restrictions on contractors are not the answer."

Although the consolidations helped contractors survive the spending cuts, they now threaten to undermine the industry. That's because many in Congress and at the Pentagon want to impose stricter oversight and controls on weapons manufacturing and development while simultaneously demanding more competition -- driving the system to an immature and evolving "globalized" marketplace.

Here's the thing though: Better oversight and better procurement practices may not "fix the problem," but because of the nature of the defense "market," it may be the government's only tool to increase acquisition value.

The long saga of General Services Administrator Lurita Doan has finally come to an end - the White House fired her yesterday. We have posted extensively on Doan's short tenure at the GSA on this blog, in our press room, and in the Watcher as well. It seemed there just was never enough print space to truly capture all the corrupt, illegal, and unethical behavior of Ms. Doan (also see here, here, here, and here).

My only question at this point is, why was she fired now? It's been 11 months since the independent Office of Special Counsel recommended to President Bush that Doan be fired for blatant violations of the Hatch Act - which prohibits the use of federal resources for partisan political activities. It certainly does seem like strange timing, but I suppose I should stop being surprised by the bizarre actions of this administration.