Chain Reaction

When the power of suggestion sets off a series of unfortunate events.

In March 2003, radio personality Armstrong Williams gave a business proposal for promoting the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act to Education Secretary Rod Paige during a meeting. Paige later passed on the proposal to his chief of staff. The chief of staff met with the department's public affairs director about the proposal later that month, but they didn't act. Williams called the secretary's office a few times to see what was going on, so Paige asked his staffers to look at the plan again.

According to a subsequent inspector general review, Paige's suggestion set in motion a series of actions that led to a questionable contract with Williams that cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the work wasn't done and most of what was seems to have fallen short of the expected result-educating low-income minority families about No Child Left Behind. The contract became a scandal, first reported by USA Today last winter, because it called on Williams to comment favorably about the law. It appeared that the department was paying for propaganda.

After Paige's request to reevaluate the proposal, the public affairs director and his deputy met with Williams. The public affairs deputy didn't want to do business, but the director did. So he ordered Ketchum, a public relations contractor for the department, to hire Williams as a subcontractor to promote No Child Left Behind. Ketchum officials thought it was an unusual request, but they did as they were told. Through Ketchum, the department gave Williams $114,000 in January 2004 for public relations on the law.

In May 2004, the contract expired, so Ketchum submitted a second proposal on Williams' behalf, this one including the promise of favorable commentary. That promise prompted the propaganda accusation.

The public affairs director wanted to approve the second proposal, but the deputy and a new chief of staff disagreed. They raised their concerns with Paige and with the department's general counsel. Paige asked his chief of staff whether the new proposal was illegal. The chief of staff then asked the general counsel to review the proposal. The general counsel, in turn, asked his deputy counsel to do it. In June, the deputy counsel told his boss that the proposal was probably legal, but he recommended that it would be best not to approve it.

The general counsel told the chief of staff the department could reject the proposal, but that there was no legal reason to do so. Shortly afterward, Paige asked the general counsel if the proposal was legally defensible. The general counsel said yes. He left out his deputy's concerns, and Paige didn't ask. Near the end of June, the department paid Williams another $140,000 under the second proposal.

In December, USA Today wrote about the contract, raising the propaganda issue. The White House denounced the deal and distanced itself from Paige, who left the government in January. When former White House adviser Margaret Spellings took over the department, she requested an inspector general review, which explained the sequence of events. To Spellings, the lesson was clear: "My personal observation is the Office of the Secretary carries weight," she wrote. "When the secretary, his/her chief of staff and other senior officers urge, hint, suggest or recommend anything, it can start a chain reaction . . . As a result, it is the secretary who must be careful about and is ultimately responsible for the signals that his/her office sends."

The scandal also shows what happens when leaders don't seek, don't hear, don't listen to or don't heed their subordinates' concerns. Leaders must worry about the signals they send. And they must also listen for the signals they should receive.