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White House aide admits plagiarism and resigns

Other News Materials 1 March 2008 10:46 (UTC +04:00)

( Los Angeles Times ) - The White House official serving as President Bush's liaison to various conservative groups resigned Friday after it was disclosed that a newspaper column he wrote contained material lifted without attribution from a student publication.

The aide, Timothy S. Goeglein, has worked at the White House since 2001, most recently as special assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a written statement that Bush was "disappointed" about Goeglein's plagiarism and "saddened" for him and his family.

Goeglein, 44, was accused Friday of using material from the Dartmouth Review -- an independent student publication for which a number of leading conservative writers have worked -- in columns he wrote, with White House sanction, for the News-Sentinel of his native Fort Wayne, Ind.

The newspaper reported on its Web site that Goeglein had admitted that portions of a column about education that appeared under his name in Thursday's paper "were used from another source without attribution."

The newspaper said that 20 of 38 columns Goeglein had written for it from 2000 to 2008 "have been found to have portions copied from other sources without attribution."

It said he had submitted guest columns, for which he was not paid, for more than 20 years, and that the paper was checking his earlier essays. In a statement on the News-Sentinel's Web site, editor Kerry Hubartt said: "We will not publish writings by Goeglein in the future."

Goeglein first went to work for Bush as an aide during the 2000 presidential campaign. He was enlisted by Karl Rove, the top political adviser to the then-governor of Texas.

In the White House, Goeglein continued to work for Rove, who left the White House staff last year. Goeglein's most recent position involved reaching out to the president's conservative allies -- primarily economic and religious groups -- as the White House sought to build support for Bush's programs.

His guest columns in the News-Sentinel were not written with the sanction of the administration, although he was identified as a White House official.

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said the press office did not know that he was writing the essays. She added that Goeglein has said that, earlier in the administration, he had notified someone in the office of his submissions.

The similarities between his work and that in the Dartmouth publication were disclosed by a blogger, Nancy Nall, a former News-Sentinel columnist. On Friday, she posted several examples.

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