by Mark Silva

The National Journal is reporting today that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson is under investigation by the agency's inspector general, the FBI and the Justice Department over his involvement in the awarding of contracts.

The report is posted online today and published in the Oct. 6 issue. The reporter is Ed Pound.

See the report here in the Swamp as well:

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson with President Bush at a Rose Garden announcement of proposed relief for homeowners facing mortgage foreclosure. HUD photo.

In April last year, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson traveled to Dallas to deliver a speech to a group of minority real estate executives. The event should have been pretty routine stuff. But Jackson-and these are his words-shot off his mouth by describing how he believed contracts should be awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The secretary recalled, for instance, how he once had killed a contract award because the contractor had disparaged his friend President Bush.

Not too long after his speech, when he was back in Washington, Jackson realized he had blundered. Democratic lawmakers, citing concerns about political favoritism in HUD contract awards, called for an investigation by the department's inspector general. One powerful senator demanded Jackson's resignation. Jackson, meanwhile, issued an apology: HUD contracts, he said, were never "awarded, rejected, or rescinded" because of political influence or bias.

The matter, however, didn't end there. HUD Inspector General Kenneth Donohue launched an investigation. Last September, Donohue rendered his verdict in a lengthy report: Although Jackson had, in fact, urged senior aides to consider the political views of contractors in doling out department business, "no direct evidence" linked political favoritism to such awards. Jackson, it seemed, had dodged a bullet.

But perhaps not, because federal investigators are once again on Jackson's trail. And this time, the investigation seems more serious. Donohue's investigators are now working with the FBI, a federal grand jury in Washington, and prosecutors from the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section. The investigation appears to focus, in part, on whether Jackson misled Congress when he testified earlier this year that he had never intervened in awarding HUD contracts. "I don't touch contracts," the HUD boss told a Senate panel on May 3.

Investigators are exploring whether Jackson, despite that testimony, had actually lined up a contract at the HUD-controlled Housing Authority of New Orleans, or HANO, for a golfing buddy and social friend from Hilton Head Island, S.C. The friend, William Hairston, was paid more than $485,000 for working at HANO during an 18-month period, according to figures provided by HUD and a former HANO official. The work was not competitively bid.

In an interview, Hairston, a stucco contractor, said that Jackson had indeed helped him land the job at HANO. He said that the New Orleans housing agency, which HUD manages under receivership, was struggling to repair and rehab its housing units in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and needed a construction manager. "The secretary asked me if I would go to New Orleans and help them out," Hairston told National Journal.

Jackson declined to be interviewed for this story, but his office put together a written response to questions posed by NJ. In the answers, his spokesman, Jerry Brown, did not respond directly to the question of whether Jackson had asked Hairston to assist the New Orleans housing authority.

Instead, Brown responded that Hairston was one of three construction managers whose names Jackson had passed along, through an aide, to HANO. According to Brown, the secretary suggested the names after a HUD-appointed receiver at HANO approached him and said she was in "desperate need of a construction manager."

Brown also said that Jackson was a friend of Hairston's, that HANO hired the contractor on an "emergency" basis, and that the secretary had not misled Congress. "Secretary Jackson," Brown wrote, "has always been forthright with members of Congress." Asked if Jackson had been questioned by investigators or if his or any other HUD records had been subpoenaed, Brown responded, "HUD cannot comment on IG activities."

The criminal investigation of Jackson was confirmed by Hairston, by others once or currently affiliated with HANO and HUD, and by other government officials. Hairston said he believed that HANO let him go last June because of the federal inquiry. Investigators have seized his computer at the New Orleans housing agency, he said.

According to a HANO employee, who asked not to be identified, FBI and HUD IG agents recently delivered a grand jury subpoena to the housing agency. "The FBI and the IG asked ... for everything-written notes, e-mails, minutes, telephone messages-in relation to this contract with Hairston Construction Services," the employee told National Journal. "They wanted whatever pertained to William Hairston."