GAO: Education Dept.’s PR Deal With Armstrong Williams Violated Law

The Department of Education violated federal law regarding covert propaganda when it hired the commentator Armstrong Williams to promote its policies, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has concluded.

In a strong denunciation of an arrangement in which Mr. Williams received $240,000 in federal money, the GAO said the commentator’s work to promote the No Child Left Behind Act through his cable television show and syndicated newspaper columns, without acknowledging that he his relationship with the department, “qualifies as the production or distribution of covert propaganda.”

Earlier this year, the Education Department’s inspector general’s office had criticized the department’s agreements with Mr. Williams from 2003 and 2004, saying they raised troubling concerns regarding oversight, among other issues. But the office concluded that the contract did not...