White House aide resigns over plagiarism
Timothy Goeglein, who held an outreach position working with conservative groups, admits to lifting material without attribution for his newspaper columns.
WASHINGTON -- The White House official who represented President Bush 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.
He 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 Goeglein wrote on his own for the News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne, Ind.
Goeglein, in his early forties, is from that area.
The newspaper reported on its website 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 material in at least 20 Goeglein columns came from other sources without attribution and that it was checking for other possible instances of plagiarism by him.
The aide joined Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, enlisted by Karl Rove, the top political advisor 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 groups 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.
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, including this one:
From Goeglein's most recent column: "A notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College in the last century, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey, expressed the matter succinctly. His wisdom is not only profound but also worth pondering in this new century. He said, 'The goal of education is to form the Citizen. And the Citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-found his civilization.'
"He meant that, I think, in quite a large sense. He did not mean that you had to master all the specialties you can think of, but rather to be an educated man or woman, you needed to be familiar with the large and indispensable components of our civilization."
From the Dartmouth Review, in an article by Jeffrey Hart, which Nall said was published in 1998: "A notable Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey often expressed the matter succinctly. 'The goal of education,' he would say, 'is to form the Citizen. And the Citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-found his civilization.'
"He meant that in quite large a sense. He did not mean that you had to master all the specialties you can think of.
"He meant that you need to be familiar with the large and indispensable components of your -- this -- civilization."
james.gerstenzang@latimes.com
