A visit from the White House drug czar to western North Carolina last year has raised questions in a congressional investigation into the politicization of the national drug policy office.
Drug czar John Walters met with GOP Reps. Patrick McHenry and Charles Taylor in their home districts in August, reports Barb Barrett.
The meetings, each with local sheriffs, were held behind closed doors but highlighted in local newspapers at the time. According to a memo and e-mails obtained by a House oversight committee, the visits appeared to be part of a larger program to have officials from the Office of National Drug Control Policy visit districts of vulnerable GOP members of Congress.
They included visits to 20 events across the nation to towns that an official described in an e-mail as “god awful places.”
On Aug. 1, Walters, director of the drug office, met with McHenry and six local sheriffs in Lenoir, in Caldwell County. There, they talked about sheriffs’ appreciation for specialized drug courts.
The same day, Walters held a press conference in Asheville with Taylor, who was in a tight race for re-election. Walters praised Taylor’s work combating methamphetamine.
Taylor lost his re-election bid in November to Democrat Heath Shuler.
Read more after the jump.
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The memo, authored in part by White House political affairs director Sara Taylor, describes 31 suggested or completed visits by Walters to Republican districts around the country. According to U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight committee, most of the GOP members were faced tough re-election races. Several, like Charles Taylor, lost their jobs.
In a follow-up e-mail, a White House official passed along praise from Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political advisor, for the work of Walters and his deputies.
“The Director and the Deputies deserve the most recognition because they actually had to give up time with their familes for the god awful places we sent them,” reads the e-mail from Douglas Simon, the drug office’s liaison to the White House.
Waxman has asked Sara Taylor to voluntarily testify to the House Committee on Oversight Government Reform about the memo and e-mails.
“I recognize that federal political appointees have traveled to events with members of Congress in prior administrations,” Waxman wrote Taylor. “What is striking about your memo to (the drug policy office) is the degree of White House control, the number of trips, and the agency involved.”
On Tuesday, Waxman asked the White House for more documents about travel by the departments of Commerce, Agriculture and Transportation to events with Republican members of Congress.
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