GSA Chief Scrutinized For Deal With Friend

Doan often speaks to groups about overcoming the struggles in her past and reminisces about how her great-grandmother fed the family by selling pralines on the docks in New Orleans. The family home was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina.

She was appointed to run the GSA after a 15-year career as owner of New Technology Management Inc. The Reston-based firm, which provides surveillance equipment for border security and other projects, was named in 2004 as one of the nation's fastest-growing small technology businesses.

During her business career, Doan developed close ties to the GOP. Between 1999 and 2006, she and her husband, Douglas, a former military intelligence officer and business liaison official at the Department of Homeland Security, donated nearly $226,000 to Republican campaigns and causes, documents show.

In 2004, Bush introduced Doan at a Commerce Department event for women who own small businesses. Later that year, Doan was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention in New York. In 2005, Doan sold her firm for an undisclosed sum to a group of investors and retired. At the time, New Technology Management had revenue of nearly $20 million and government contracts worth more than $200 million.

Last spring, the Bush administration asked Doan to take over the GSA, which had been shaken by scandal after lobbyist Jack Abramoff tried to obtain properties under GSA control. Abramoff took then-GSA chief of staff David H. Safavian and others on an all-expenses-paid golf trip to Scotland, and Safavian provided Abramoff with inside information about the properties. Both men have been convicted.

On April 6, Bush nominated Doan to be the first female administrator in GSA history. She pledged to make the agency operate more like a private business and to "restore GSA's leadership as the premier contracting and service provider."

On July 25, two months after taking office, Doan signed the no-bid contract with Public Affairs Group Inc. and two of its divisions, the Business Women's Network and Diversity Best Practices. The companies were founded and are operated by Fraser, the president and chief executive of Public Affairs Group and the president of Diversity Best Practices. The contract was signed on the letterhead of the two divisions, and Doan said Diversity Best Practices was to have done the work.

An online newsletter posted by Diversity Best Practices and the Business Women's Network in 2003 called Doan a "partner" and described her as "one of the nation's best and brightest women entrepreneurs."

Deneen Vaughn, a former vice president of Public Affairs Group, told The Post in an interview last week that Doan's company often sponsored programs arranged by the Business Women's Network and spoke at the group's events.

"She's been a longtime friend and business partner of Edie Fraser," said Vaughn, who left the organization in May. "She supported the growth and development of the company, and she mentors other members of our organization."

The companies run by Fraser routinely sponsor diversity-oriented events that attract such luminaries as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Fortune 500 executives.

Early in her career, Fraser worked as an Africa desk officer for the Peace Corps. She later started Edie Fraser Associates, a public relations firm that won a measure of notoriety in 1980 when it secured a $9,800 no-bid contract to study the Commerce Department's public relations office.