career employees out of government and replace them with applicants selected through a political rating system of 1–4, based on factors such as campaign contributions and future campaign value. The Watergate Committee's finding of the abuses led to creation of the Ink Commission, whose exhaustive study and recommendations were the foundation for the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, including creation of the Office of Special Counsel to see that this type of merit system abuse never happened again. Nevertheless, even with the strong impetus for its creation, under President Carter, the Office languished with no permanent head, funding, or White House support. Though not as productive as it could have been, as a young agency in 1979, the Office of Special Counsel filed two requests for corrective action with the Merit Systems Protection Board. In Frazier, four deputy U.S. Marshals were threatened with geographic reassignment for blowing the whistle and exercising their appeal rights. In Tariela and Meiselman, two high-level Department of Veterans Affairs employees were threatened with reassignment for disclosing violations of laws, rules, and regulations. In its first year, the Office of Special Counsel also requested legislation regarding many concerns, among them whether the Special Counsel has litigation authority in court, and it asked for administrative independence from the Merit Systems Protection Board, of which it was a part. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he appointed Alex Kozinski to head the OSC. Within 14 months of his appointment, 70 percent of attorneys and investigators at the office's headquarters were either fired or had resigned. Mr. Kozinski "kept a copy of the Malek Manual on his desk," according to Devine's testimony. Devine added: He used its techniques to purge the professional civil service experts on his own staff, and replace them with employees who viewed whistleblowers as crazy troublemakers disloyal to the President. He taught courses to federal managers on how to fire whistleblowers without getting caught by OSC investigators, using the OSC Investigations Manual as a handout. He tutored Interior Secretary James Watt on how to remove a whistleblowing coal mine inspector from the Department of Interior. The OSC became what one Senate staffer called "a legalized plumbers unit." Devine also testified that: Mr. Kozinski's abuses were the major catalyst for passage of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, and he was forced to resign. Under the WPA, the Office of Special Counsel became