Wtf is going on here?????
And these meetings are being held at the Peace Corps Hqtrs.
http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/178855.html
Top diplomats got briefings on political battles
By PAUL KANE
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- White House aides have conducted at least half a dozen political briefings for the Bush administration's top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a "general political briefing" at Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections.
The briefings, mostly run by Rove's deputies at the White House political affairs office, began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses for senior officials of the political landscape surrounding critical congressional and gubernatorial races, according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Its chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., has written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask whether the briefings inappropriately politicized the diplomatic agencies or violated prohibitions against political work by most federal employees.
"I do not understand why ambassadors, in Washington on official duty, would be briefed by White House officials on which Democratic House members are considered top targets by the Republican Party for defeat in 2008," Biden wrote.
His aides said Biden plans to raise the matter at a confirmation hearing today for Henrietta Holsman Fore to be administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose political appointees received at least two White House briefings in the past 10 months.
The ambassadors included in the Rove briefing were Eduardo Aguirre Jr. (the ambassador to Spain), James Cain (Denmark), Alfred Hoffman Jr. (Portugal), Ronald Spogli (Italy), Craig Stapleton (France) and Robert Tuttle (Britain). Gregory Slayton, the consul general to Bermuda, also attended.
In total, the seven donated more than $1.6 million to Republican causes from 2000 through 2006, according to a Center for Responsive Politics report on Bush donors who were named as ambassadors.
The briefings struck some former ambassadors as highly unusual.
James Dobbins, who was an ambassador in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said that he never attended an organized meeting for political appointees.
Former Sen. James Sasser, D-Tenn., an ambassador under Clinton, said that he was, "frankly, shocked to hear it."