DRUG OFFICIAL'S VISIT TO NC DRAW CRITICISM

WASHINGTON - A visit from the top White House drug official to Western North Carolina last year has raised questions in a congressional investigation into the
politicization of the national drug policy office. John Walters,
director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy,
met with GOP Reps. Patrick McHenry and Charles Taylor in their home
districts in August.

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-mail messages obtained by a House of Representatives oversight
committee, the visits appeared to be part of a larger plan 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, in towns that an
official described in an e-mail message as "the god awful places we
sent them." On Aug. 1, Walters, director of the drug office, met with
McHenry and six local sheriffs in Lenoir, in Catawba County. There,
they talked about sheriffs' appreciation for specialized drug courts.

The same day, Walters held a news 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.
The memo, written 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 faced tough re-election races. Several, like Charles
Taylor, lost their jobs. In a follow-up e-mail message, a White House
official passed along praise from Karl Rove, President Bush's top
political adviser, 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 families for the god
awful places we sent them," reads the message from Douglas Simon, the
drug office's liaison to the White House.

Shuler's office declined to comment about the visits. McHenry
spokesman Aaron Latham said he recalled staffers talking last year
about possibly inviting Walters to the district as a follow-up to work
McHenry was doing on methamphetamine. A McHenry proposal to double the
penalty from 10 to 20 years for manufacturing meth in front of
children was signed into law by President Bush a few months before
Walters' visit. "The meeting was one component in the congressman's
successful strategy to build a federal-local partnership to combat
meth in Western North Carolina," Latham said.

McHenry won re-election in a safe Republican seat and wasn't
considered vulnerable, but he also is considered an up-and-coming
member of the GOP who often appears on conservative talk shows to
promote Republican positions or rebut Democrats.

Waxman has asked Sara Taylor to voluntarily testify to the House
Committee on Oversight Government Reform about the memo and e-mail
messages. "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."