May 25, 2006
At Trial of an Ex-White House Aide, an Admission and a Denial
By PHILIP SHENON, NY TIMES

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WASHINGTON, May 24 : A former White House aide who went on trial Wednesday in the influence-peddling scandal centered on the lobbyist Jack Abramoff offered an admission rarely heard these days in Washington: he acknowledged he was once a good friend of the now-disgraced lobbyist.

The admission by the former aide, David H. Safavian, came in opening statements by his lawyer. Mr. Safavian is accused of lying to government investigators about his relationship with Mr. Abramoff and the circumstances of their 2002 golfing trip to Scotland.

His lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, told jurors in Federal District Court here that Mr. Safavian, who resigned last year as the Bush administration's chief procurement officer, had not lied.

She argued that he was on trial because of "guilt by association" with Mr. Abramoff, who is a pariah among lawmakers and others who once courted him.

"David Safavian was not in Jack Abramoff's pocket, but he was his friend," Ms. Van Gelder said. "This is a case of friendship, not false statements."

She said that at the time of the first of Mr. Safavian's supposedly false statements four years ago, "nobody knew that Jack Abramoff was a crook."

The federal prosecutor, Peter R. Zeidenberg, charged that Mr. Safavian lied repeatedly to investigators beginning in 2002 when he was questioned about his invitation from Mr. Abramoff to join the golfing expedition to Scotland.

The trip took place shortly after Mr. Safavian became chief of staff at the General Services Administration, which serves as the federal government's real estate manager.

The prosecutor showed jurors a copy of a July 2002 e-mail message in which Mr. Safavian sought permission to go on the trip, telling an ethics officer that Mr. Abramoff "has no business before G.S.A."

In fact, Mr. Zeidenberg said, in the weeks before the golf trip, Mr. Abramoff repeatedly pressed Mr. Safavian in e-mail messages for assistance in gathering information to help the lobbyist acquire two large parcels of government real estate, including the Old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, close to the White House.

"We're going to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt, relying mainly on the defendant's own words," Mr. Zeidenberg said. He described Mr. Safavian as a government official who "worked first and foremost to further the interests of one particular individual - a rich and powerful lobbyist."

Ms. Van Gelder suggested to the jurors that the case would come down to a definition of the word "business," and that Mr. Safavian did not consider Mr. Abramoff to be doing business with the G.S.A. in the summer of 2002, especially since neither of the government properties was on the market then and since no real estate deal with Mr. Abramoff ever took place.

"This was not business," she said. "No bid, no buy, no lease, no business."

Mr. Safavian is the first person to face trial as a result of the scandals involving Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to corrupt lawmakers and other public officials.

washingtonpost.com
Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; A01

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The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.

The complaint, filed by the FBI, alleges that David H. Safavian, 38, a White House procurement official involved until last week in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002.

It also contends that he concealed his efforts to help Abramoff acquire control of two federally managed properties in the Washington area. Abramoff is the person identified as "Lobbyist A" in a 13-page affidavit unsealed in court, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe.

Until his resignation on the day the criminal complaint against him was signed, Safavian was the top administrator at the federal procurement office in the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he set purchasing policy for the entire government.

The arrest occurred at his home in Alexandria. A man who answered the phone there yesterday hung up when a reporter asked to speak to Safavian.

Abramoff was indicted by federal prosecutors in Miami last month on unrelated charges of wire fraud and conspiracy. He remains the linchpin of an 18-month probe by a federal task force that includes the Internal Revenue Service, the Interior Department and the Justice Department's fraud and public integrity units. His lawyer did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Abramoff's allegedly improper dealings with Indian tribes -- which netted him and an associate at least $82 million in fees -- prompted the federal probe. But investigators have found that his documents and e-mails contain a trove of information about his aggressive efforts to seek favors for clients from members of Congress and senior bureaucrats.

Accompanying Safavian and Abramoff on the 2002 trip to Scotland, for example, were Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee, lobbyist and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed and Neil Volz, a lobbyist with Abramoff at the Washington office of Greenburg Traurig.

Like Abramoff, Safavian is a veteran Washington player. He is a former lobbying partner of anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and previously worked with Abramoff at another firm. Both he and Abramoff have represented gambling clients and Indian tribes with gambling interests.

At the time of the golf trip, Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration, where ethics rules flatly prohibited the receipt of a gift from any person seeking an official action by the agency. When Safavian asked GSA ethics officers for permission to go on the trip, he assured them in writing that Abramoff "has no business before GSA," according to the affidavit signed by FBI special agent Jeffrey A. Reising.

Reising alleged, however, that Abramoff had by then already secretly enlisted Safavian in an effort to buy 40 acres of land that GSA managed in Silver Spring for use as the campus of a Hebrew school Abramoff founded. Safavian also allegedly tried to help Abramoff lease space for Abramoff's clients in an old post office building downtown.

On July 22, 2002, Abramoff sent Safavian an e-mail with a proposed draft letter that "at least two members of Congress" could send to GSA supporting the lease, according to the affidavit. "Does this work, or do you want it to be longer?" Abramoff asked.

Three days later, Safavian forwarded Abramoff an e-mail describing how an employee at OMB was resisting Abramoff's plan to lease space at the post office. "I suspect we'll end up having to bring some Hill pressure to bear on OMB," Safavian messaged Abramoff.

On the same day Safavian discussed the golf trip with the ethics office, he sent an e-mail to Abramoff from his home computer, advising him how to "lay out a case for this lease." Abramoff subsequently wrote in an e-mail to his wife and two officials of the school that Safavian had shown him a map of the property at his GSA office but had cautioned that Abramoff should not visit again "given my high profile politically."

Safavian nonetheless arranged a meeting for Abramoff's wife and business partner with officials at GSA on the day before he departed for Scotland aboard Abramoff's chartered jet. The trip cost more than $120,000 and was paid for mostly by a charity founded and run by Abramoff, the Capital Athletic Foundation.

When Safavian was questioned by The Washington Post about the trip in January, he said he paid his share of the expenses and took unpaid leave. "The trip was exclusively personal; I did no business there. . . . Jack is an old friend of mine," Safavian said.

But the complaint alleges that Safavian lied about his contacts with Abramoff on three occasions after his initial false pledge to the GSA ethics officer. The first was during a 2003 investigation by GSA's inspector general, who was responding to an anonymous tipster's hotline complaint; the second was in a March 17, 2005, letter to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs; and the third was during an FBI interview on May 26, 2005.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

washingtonpost.com
Aide Was Reticent on Lobbying for Foreign Clients
By Susan Schmidt and R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; A02

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David H. Safavian, the Bush administration official arrested Monday, initially failed to disclose lobbying work he had done for several controversial foreign clients when he went before a Senate panel last year to be confirmed as chief of the White House's federal procurement office.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held up Safavian's nomination for more than a year, in part because of lawmakers' concerns about lobbying work for two men later accused of links to suspected terrorist organizations, according to committee documents. Safavian did not disclose his firm's representation of the men until questioned in writing by the committee's staff, and initially failed to tell the panel he had registered as a foreign agent for two controversial African regimes.

The Senate panel nevertheless approved him unanimously and the Senate followed suit on Nov. 21, 2004.

Safavian was arrested Monday on charges of lying and obstructing an investigation into former powerhouse lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. Safavian resigned his government post Friday. Yesterday, his attorney, Barbara Van Gelder, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Senate approval of Safavian occurred two months after The Washington Post disclosed Safavian's participation in an August 2002 Scotland golf trip with Abramoff. That trip was central to the criminal complaint against Safavian unsealed on Monday.

Yesterday, a spokeswoman for committee chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the review of Safavian's background had been thorough.

"Based on our extensive review of his qualifications and background, we had no reason to believe that Mr. Safavian had engaged in any wrongdoing," said a spokeswoman for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the committee's senior Democrat at the time of the vote.

The record of Safavian's confirmation shows extensive questioning by the committee staff about his alleged lobbying for local Muslim leader Abdurahman Alamoudi, who in October 2000 made widely publicized comments supporting Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, at a rally in Lafayette Park.

Lobby disclosure forms originally filed by Safavian's firm, Janus-Merritt Strategies, show that it represented Alamoudi, a prominent Muslim activist, until 2001. Alamoudi has since been convicted and imprisoned for accepting money from the Libyan government as part of an alleged plot to assassinate the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

Janus-Merritt Strategies changed its lobby disclosure forms in 2001 to indicate that its client was not Alamoudi but Jamal Barzinji. In March 2002, Barzinji was named in a search warrant affidavit filed by a Customs Service official as "the officer or director" of a group of entities in Northern Virginia "controlled by individuals who have shown support for terrorists or terrorist fronts." No charges have been filed against Barzinji, and he has denied any wrongdoing.

Safavian told the committee in an April 16, 2004, letter that he and his firm never did any work for Alamoudi. He said the firm lobbied at Barzinji's request to gain U.S. support to free the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, who was imprisoned for six years.

Safavian also told the committee that he had "overlooked" two other clients while preparing his initial submissions for the OMB position. He did not initially mention work as a registered foreign agent for Gabon, a country persistently rated by the United States as having a "poor" human rights record, or his work as a registered foreign agent for Pascal Lissouba, the former president of the Republic of Congo who has been tried in absentia for treason and embezzlement.

Safavian, former chief of staff at the General Services Administration, is charged with three counts of making false statements and obstructing a GSA investigation into his ties with Abramoff. Before joining the government, Safavian worked as a lobbyist with Abramoff, then founded Janus-Merritt Strategies with conservative antitax crusader Grover Norquist.

As a lobbyist, he represented the government of Pakistan on military sales matters and the Islamic Institute in an effort to promote a U.S. postage stamp commemorating Ramadan. With Abramoff, he also represented the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate, to try to block the imposition of minimum wage rules.

In its probe, the Senate committee also raised questions about a potential conflict of interest between Safavian and his wife, Jennifer, the chief counsel for oversight and investigations at the House Committee of Government Reform, which oversees federal procurement policy matters.

Safavian said his wife had pledged to recuse herself from "any matters where the conduct of officials and employees" at the Office of Management and Budget the principal issue, "as well as matters relating specifically to procurement policy, competitive sourcing, or information technology."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

washingtonpost.com
Teaching Uncle Sam to Be a Better Buyer
New Procurement Administrator Will Oversee How Federal Contracts Are Awarded
By Stephen Barr, Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 21, 2005; Page A15

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While David Safavian, the Bush administration's new chief for government-wide procurement policy, cooled his jets waiting for Senate confirmation, federal contracting got hot.

" The government's procurement community was rocked by court testimony from Darleen A. Druyun, a former top acquisition official at the Air Force, that she had favored Boeing Co. in contract decisions.

" A review by the inspector general at the General Services Administration found that employees of the GSA's Federal Technology Service, which buys high-tech products and services on behalf of the government, had not followed the rules in awarding and managing millions of dollars in contracts, raising questions about whether taxpayers paid too much on some of the contracts.

The law that created Safavian's position -- administrator for federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget -- does not allow Safavian to intervene in ongoing procurement actions, but he can use the OMB's budget clout to call agencies on the carpet.

"We do have a responsibility to make sure that we have our policies correct," he said in a recent interview. "I view my job as helping to identify policies that are either good for the system or bad for the system, and act accordingly."

Safavian was nominated by President Bush for the OMB post on Jan. 22, 2004, and was confirmed just before Thanksgiving. His nomination was held up, along with about 150 others last year, by Senate Democrats who objected to a number of administration policies.

During part of his wait for confirmation, Safavian served as counselor to Clay Johnson III, deputy director for management at the OMB. Safavian had previously served as chief of staff at the GSA, where he picked up experience in federal contracting issues.

He started his career as a lawyer and worked on Capitol Hill for three House members. He also has worked as a consultant and lobbyist on telecommunications, Indian gambling, tax policy and other matters. In his free time on weekends, he serves as a volunteer police officer in the District and in Dumfries, Va.

With renewed questions being raised on Capitol Hill and inside agencies about contracting practices, Safavian may have to turn his job into a bully pulpit -- championing high standards while reassuring critics that adequate checks and balances are in place to protect taxpayer money.

The Pentagon has begun a review of military procurement systems in light of the Boeing case, and Safavian said the OMB is working to "see if there is any additional support we can provide them so that they have the right policies so that this never happens again."

If the review finds that additional legislative safeguards are required, Safavian said, the OMB "will lock arms" with the Defense Department and go to Congress for a remedy.

Although agencies bear the primary responsibility for addressing improper contracting practices, Safavian indicated that he will be looking at various policies to see whether they can be improved. He plans, for example, to review federal agencies that, for a fee, purchase goods and services on behalf of other agencies. The OMB will look at how fee-for-service agencies solicit their business, where they spend their revenue and the quality of training they offer their staffs, he said.

Asked whether procurement flexibilities enacted during the 1990s are causing systemic problems or whether contract personnel are at fault, Safavian said, "I think it is primarily individual bad actors." But, he added, "what compounds the problem is that we don't have sufficient quantities of training available to our folks."

He said "training, training, training" will be one of his primary themes in the Bush administration's second term. Safavian said his sense that the acquisition workforce needs more training should not be taken as a criticism, but in the spirit that "we want to make sure they have all the tools. . . . We should be the best at buying."

Better training of the acquisition workforce also may help the administration deal with another potential problem: a loss of experience in the ranks because of retirements likely to take place over the next five years. About 40 percent of procurement professionals are nearing retirement age, raising questions about whether agencies will have enough contract managers to oversee their projects.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, plans to look at reorganization of the GSA and whether parts of the federal acquisition system needs modification. Safavian's wife, Jennifer Safavian, is chief counsel for oversight and investigations on the committee, and she has signed a recusal agreement that will keep her from looking into OMB and procurement matters.

Safavian, in addition to once working on the Hill as an aide to lawmakers, has also been a lobbyist. He was a co-founder of the lobby and consulting shop Janus-Merritt Strategies -- with Grover Norquist, a Republican anti-tax activist -- and has lobbied for the National Indian Gaming Association, the Interactive Gaming Council, the Interactive Services Association, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, NorthPoint Communications Inc. and Covad Communications, among others.

While he was the GSA chief of staff in August 2002, Safavian took part in a trip to Scotland hosted by the Capital Athletic Foundation, a charity now under federal investigation because of its ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff and questions about its spending and revenue. Also on the trip was Abramoff, House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed.

Safavian said he got the trip approved by the agency's ethics counsel in advance, paid for his share of the expenses in advance and took unpaid leave. "The trip was exclusively personal; I did no business there. . . . Jack is an old friend of mine," Safavian said.

During the administration's second term, Safavian said, he will concentrate on helping to implement the president's federal management agenda. In particular, that means a continued push to expand, and hopefully reap, cost savings and efficiencies from "competitive sourcing."

The initiative has roiled parts of the federal workforce and emerged as a prime target of unions on Capitol Hill. It requires agencies to conduct job studies of their commercial activities to determine whether they can be performed more efficiently -- either through contracting out or by a restructuring of the in-house staff.

Safavian's predecessor, Angela B. Styles, rewrote OMB Circular A-76 in an attempt to streamline the job competitions and level the playing field between federal employees and contractors. But federal unions contend that competitive sourcing is just a way for Bush to reward campaign supporters and industry; they argue that project savings are illusory.

Safavian said the administration plans to make available more information to the public on the competitive sourcing process, in part to address concerns about whether the initiative will produce long-term savings and to explain how decisions are made.

"I think we have absolutely nothing to hide in our competitive sourcing strategy," he said, adding that he hopes to improve the OMB's communications with Congress and build support on the Hill for the initiative.

"As we move forward, as we look at our tight budgets, competitive sourcing provides a real critical management tool for agencies to get costs under control," he said. "What we see is generally, regardless of who wins these competitions, the competitive pressures drive costs down," he added.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company