Ousted GSA Chief Doan Goes Down Swinging Lurita Doan summarized her passage from IT entrepreneur to head of the General Services Administration to unemployment: “I simply lost the battle.” Doan said White House officials told her to resign April 29 after 22 months as GSA administrator. Of her first – and last — meeting with White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and other presidential aides, she said, “From the point of view of the White House, I was considered —and this is a direct quote – a distraction, a distraction from progress at GSA.” Doan survived in office for nearly a year after several congressional Democrats and the government’s Special Counsel called for her resignation. The Special Counsel, who investigates violations of the Hatch Act, found that she improperly and illegally brought politics into the GSA workplace. She denied any wrongdoing. (Special Counsel Scott Bloch now faces calls for his resignation after the FBI seized his computer files in an investigation of alleged obstruction of a federal probe.) Some published reports said White House officials were angered when she resisted their attempts to put loyalists in GSA posts. In a May 2 interview with Federal Newsradio in Washington, Doan said the catalyst for her forced resignation was her long-running feud with GSA’s inspector general, Brian Miller. Miller accused her of improprieties, while she insisted she was defending GSA employees who accused him of harassment and intimidation. “Frankly, everyone keeps missing the point,” she said. “The point has always been about the IG…I’ve been on the IG from the start. I simply lost the battle.” After two outside investigations cleared Miller, Doan refused to back off. “I will stay on this issue like a dog on a bone,” she said in late April. She wrote a letter to one of her critics, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, asking him to investigate the IG. She described the letter as “the straw that broke the camel’s back” in the eyes of White House officials. She was forced to resign a few days later. The White House issued a brief statement thanking her for her service Doan was a lightning rod for trouble throughout her tenure at GSA. She described herself as a “champion” of contractors, and said she moved aggressively to reorganize the agency and cut through its bureaucracy. A parade of top officials resigned, retired or transferred to other agencies. After she was pushed out the door, the White House issued a brief statement thanking her for her service.