GSA Administrator Lurita Doan To Employees: ‘You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings’

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/27/doan-email-gsa/
GSA Administrator Lurita Doan To Employees: ‘You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings’

Tomorrow, General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan will testify before Congress about her potentially illegal activity.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has discovered that in January, Doan asked “senior GSA officials to help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections through targeted public events.” Doan discussed with GSA officials “how to exclude House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from an upcoming courthouse opening in San Francisco and how to include Republican Senator Mel Martinez.” Last summer, she also signed a $20,000 no-bid contract for a 24-page report “promoting GSA’s use of minority- and women-owned businesses.” The firm was run by a woman with whom Doan “had a long-standing business relationship” and personal friendship, and was eventually canceled by agency officials.

ThinkProgress has obtained Doan’s opening statement, which can be found HERE.
http://thinkprogress.org/?page_id=11397
In it, she claims that the no-bid contract was simply a “procedural mistake in my zealous efforts to promote small and disadvantaged businesses.” She also denies ever encouraging her staff to engage in partisan politicking.

In a heartfelt e-mail yesterday, Doan alerted GSA employees that she will be testifying on Thursday and won’t forget to mention “the great work all of you have done this last year.” The e-mail:

Sent by: GSA Administrator
To: All Users
Subject: MESSAGE FROM THE ADMINISTRATOR
Date/Time: 03/26/2007 04:48 PM

Dear Fellow GSA employees:

As you may be aware, I will be appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this Wednesday at 10 a.m. (EDT) to answer questions raised in recent news articles. I want you to know that I am grateful to have the opportunity to address these questions and set the record straight. But I also look forward to letting the Committee know of the great work all of you have done this last year resulting in many “good news”ť stories about GSA and what this agency is doing to serve the American people.

Because it’s important to keep all of you informed on something as important as this hearing, I wanted to share my written testimony with you before it is released to the public. You can access it by going to GSA InSite (http://insite.gsa.gov/).

Thank you again for all of your support and kind words — you truly are the wind beneath my wings!

Cordially,

Lurita

We assume she’s not talking about the “great work” by the employees in her agency’s Inspector General’s office, whom she labeled “terrorists.“